It was "Take-Your-Girlfriend-To-The-Supermarket" Day today at Wegmans and I was feeling decidedly left out, shopping by myself. Oh, and, well, with my two youngest. Everywhere I looked, twosomes, threesomes, foursomes, veritable cadres of shoppers, not just mothers and daughters but peers and friends.

So, running into Marion at the checkout made me euphoric. Someone to talk to during the boring tally-up process! Oh, but my checker wouldn't have it! "I need your cart down here. And I need those items off the bottom," she said as impatiently as if it were Sunday afternoon.

"You mean you're going to load my shopping cart for me?! To what do I owe this grand gesture of customer service?! Wasn't it only two months ago that your colleague muttered under his breath to me as I stood idle, 'I can't believe you're not helping me put your bags into your cart!'"

As Marion tried to catch me up on who was in the emergency room and who had bronchitis and who was home sick ... telltale signs that a woman is getting on in years. Why she placed her cart in the lane next to me instead of (more conveniently) behind me, I'll never know.

"I'll see you over at school, then?" I asked.

"Not right away; she has homework club." You know, maybe she wouldn't mind coming home at the end of the school day. Oh, but it's none of my business.