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People buy their groceries in supermarkets. I do that too, but I also visit their story and real life drama sections. There is so much on offer, you won’t believe it. And the beauty is, in those aisles you don’t have to fork out a cent.

The assistant at my checkout point yesterday must have been 15. Even younger if possible. I wondered how she got this job on leaving primary school. A dainty beautiful child with her fair hair, the glowing red pimple on her chin merely an indicator of her age.

Somehow very active and lively behind her till. A little bird hopping, being positive and chirpy. A stark contrast to us adults trudging along, slowly swishing the flies with our tails. She startled me when all of a sudden she came out from behind her counter, came skipping towards me and placed her Closed sign on top of the bag of dog food draped across my trolley. “Oom* is last in the queue.” Back she hopped.

I was the last one in her queue indeed. It was just after 13h00 and she had to draw the line somewhere. Otherwise she won’t get anything to eat. One has to protect your lunch time. All that she told me when it was my turn to pay. “Oom looked so frightened when I placed my sign on oom’s trolley!” To the customer approaching with his basket she merely pointed at the sign now placed on top of her counter. With a posture saying, “I know it is difficult for you, but I am not available at this stage.”

By the number of times she used the word lunch and the way she used it, I got the impression that she started on Wednesday. Lunch was the gateway to a new world that she always admired and dreamt about from a distance. To have a job with a lunch time meant that you worked amongst the grown-ups. You were now one of them.

Then the very short girl with dwarfism and her friend arrived. While they were going through the chocolate bars on the shelf a little distance away, my assistant giggled nervously, turned her head and from the corner of her mouth confided: “Gee whiz oom, I have never seen one of them for real!” She removed the sign.

I took my bags and as I walked away I could hear her asking her new customer: “How old are you?”

*  “Oom” is used in Afrikaans as a term of respect and literally means “uncle”. You try to avoid being called Oom for as       long as possible. Then the tide becomes too strong and you give up.

George