Chocolate Milk
Beautiful Fourth of July weekend and my fiance requested some brats for a family cookout. As I ran into the local market to grab some I thought to myself, "Let's make this special!" I grabbed a fancy homemade pie, cool whip, pasta salad, and some New beer bratwursts to try. I had to the checkout lane, and notice a nice short line with someone almost finished checking out. There is a man there with his teenage and preteen son. The older boy is bagging groceries and telling the younger boy about putting eggs and bread together. It appears to be a sweet family moment. The dad, I am assuming, starts counting out cash for the groceries and hands the cashier a card as well. She swipes the card twice then looks at him as she says, "This card doesn't have anything on it. ". The man looks sick and says under his breath, "I knew better than to trust him." He asks the cashier to take off the frozen pizzas. Checks amount. Then the bagged cereal. Checks again. He looks at the younger boy and says, "Sorry bud. We are going to have to wait on the chocolate milk. " My heart is in my throat. Here I am, with a handful of food that I was buying JUST BECAUSE I craved it. I had lots of food at home. I do not have cash to offer and I don't want to embarrass them by appearing impatient. I carefully start examining random candy bars and magazines in the checkout aisle. The family finally checked out and were quickly leaving with embarrassment. They almost didn't grab the change. I rushed forward and asked the cashier to ring their items up on my order. She knew exactly what to do and scrambled to get it done as quick as possible. She called over a young bagger and practically threw the food at him as she barked, " Go find that family that was just here!". The teen caught the bag, grabbed the chocolate milk and rushed out. I finished checking out, made some small talk about the weather. As I left I saw the bag boy turned delivery guy. "Did you find them", I asked? He smiled broadly and replied. "I did!" They said thank you very much. I smiled and left. As I looked out across the parking lot, I see the boy in the back seat of the car, holding his gallon of chocolate milk in his lap.