It's *free,* you foolish woman

There's this woman who works at the grocery store I go to. She's elderly, a Russian immigrant. Every time I end up in her line, she takes me to task for using cloth bags that I bought at that store. "[insert Russian accent here] Why do you spend money on those? We give you bags. For free," she adds for emphasis, just in case I don't understand. She also tries to bag individual items in plastic before putting them in the cloth bag, so that nothing leaks or oozes or breaks. At first I tried to explain. Now I just smile at the "for free" and stop her when she starts whipping out the little plastic bags. I would bristle at anyone else doing this stuff, but she's cute -- and she means well. Maybe it's the accent, maybe it's her earnestness, maybe it's that she reminds me a little bit of my grandmother, who would go to great lengths to save a buck. Whatever the reason, I like her.

I had to go to the store this morning to pick up some things for this afternoon's birthday party (the girls are turning 9 on Wednesday and we're having their family party today). I ended up in her line. She shook her head over my cloth bags. She chided me for buying organic milk produced from local grass-fed cows and sold in returnable glass bottles. "You know we got cheaper milk than this, right?" she said, frowning at me over her glasses.

"I like this milk," I said, and handed her the returnables.

She shook her head over my foolish ways. Cloth bags, expensive milk, doesn't care that something might leak or break or ooze if it's not swaddled in plastic. Clearly, I am some sort of foolish, frivolous lunatic in this woman's eyes. But today she got me. She quizzed me when she got to the birthday candles -- "You know you got two number 9s here? You want two number 9s?" -- and distracted me by going into raptures of delight upon learning that I deliberately got two number 9s instead of one because I have twins who are turning 9. She poured on the interest and charm. I was charmed. We chatted about twins (she has twin nieces who are now 41). It was fun. I stopped paying attention to what she was doing. There was only one item left to go, a bottle of dish soap. I thought it would be OK.

When I got home and started putting things away, I discovered that she'd bagged my bottle of dish soap in a plastic bag and then put the bagged dish soap in the cloth bag.

Sigh.