Herding Marbles

I spent several minutes sweeping the floor at a checkout station in one of our local grocery stores yesterday.  Thing is, I am not an employee of the store.  I was there to purchase a pie crust.

Before I tell you about that, I am going to do something I rarely do.  I am going to offer some unsolicited advice.  Here is my advice: Never tear open a bag filled with five pounds of bulk popcorn kernels while loading your goodies onto the checkout belt.

That’s some sage advice right there.

A woman did just that directly in front of me at the checkout.  The event seemed more like a popcorn explosion than anything.  Kernels sprayed in every direction and showered all over belt and the floor around us.

“Well, that didn’t go as planned,” I suggested.

The checker, a man notable for his lack of urgency, moped off to fetch a broom and (too small) dust pan.   Upon his return, I offered to clean-up the floor while the woman continued checking out her heaped cart.

“Thank you,” the woman said.

“No problem.  I don’t have anything better to do at the moment.”   

Popcorn kernels, it turns out, are rounder than I suspected.  When I tried to sweep them into manageable piles, they quickly scattered in all directions—almost is if the kernels were repelled by the broom.

I felt as if herding marbles.

I quickly adopted a strategy of, whisking kernels directly into the dustpan.  By the time our checker was ready to run me through, I had a respectable number of kernels rounded up.

“Thanks for helping and not getting mad at me,” the woman told me when the checker turned to my items.

“You’re welcome.  And now our day can only get better from here.”

—Mitchell Hegman