Dear Friends of the Good Old Days,

Dear Friends of the Good Old Days,

A pound of ground beef. A half-gallon of milk. A loaf of bread. These were the items scrawled on the shopping list I held in my 5-year-old hand as I skipped across Water Street and into the alley behind the feed mill of my small town. I was a "big girl" now, helping my mom, who had just had another baby and was trying to manage a household with five spunky children.

I was headed to the corner grocery store uptown, a mere two blocks away, but it felt like I was going somewhere exciting and far-off like the moon (no one had ever been to the actual moon, although I had heard there was a plan in the works). I was not allowed to cross the highway in town yet, but I was now permitted to navigate the quiet, unnamed graveled path to the south side of the store and back all by myself.

Being a dawdler, I stopped often along the way. A trip that should have taken me five minutes took me 15. I picked up a stone (a moon rock, perhaps?) to study it. I tried to coax a kitten out of hiding behind a grain bin. I created an impromptu game of hopscotch using a discarded corncob.

Eventually, I recalled my mission and made a beeline to the store. I dawdled in the store too, ogling the candy jars on the shelves and sniffing the fresh fruit in the bushel baskets. Sometime later, I returned home victorious, with a white butcher-paper package of hamburger, fresh bread and cold milk packed in a brown paper bag by the kind, bespectacled man at the cash register.

Unfortunately, the little corner store closed within a year and moved into a larger, more modern building four blocks away. I wasn't allowed to walk there, because it was now located on the other side of the "forbidden" highway. My solo grocery-shopping days were over almost as soon as they had begun.

But I can assure you, today I'm still a dawdler when I shop.

'Til next time,