I'm like, really old!

I shop a lot at a corner grocery store. The owners bought it from Ahmed, aka Sammy, aka Gino, a Yemini who had to go back to Yemen to take care of his sick mama. Ahmed is married to a Black American Muslim woman. Ahmed was very gentlemanly with me, but he was a lust crazed pig with the high school girls that used to shop at his store. I walked in a few times on him in action. He didn't think much of our teen girls I can tell you that, but he was great with me, always making his young nephew help me with my groceries and telling me that if I didn't have enough money to just take what needed.

Anyway, he sold the place to a couple from South India. The guy is nosy as all get out and asks probing questions about my life. His wife is super sweet and moves like a little bird, very quick and graceful and she has a way of tilting her head when she speaks, she is charming. I make cruel jokes about them to my friends as the wife has one severely crossed eye and the husband has a lazy eye that pulls to one side. I always wonder if they met at the eye clinic. I know, I know, I am mean.

The wife gets Indian spices for me so I can cook Indian dishes. The husband got upset because I stopped shopping there for a while because he was charging me too much to use my ATM card. His wife didn't charge me, but he is a bit more of a cutthroat businessman. He always ask me, "And what else? every time I buy 1 or 2 things only. So after I told him why I didn't want to shop there, unless I had cash, he told me I was a good customer and he would no longer charge me. Now he always gets upset if I use cash, as he thinks it's on account of him. He lost face.

They have a beautiful daughter who is getting ready to head off to college. Both her eyes face forward. The couple have devoted their lives to this girl and she is a good kid. I know that the couple have been defrauded by business partners twice and are in some debt. They face a lot of abuse from the Blacks over the prices they charge for items, most of which they buy at Costco and resell at the store at higher prices. The thing is, they are not getting rich off this practice at all. The daughter wants to leave this area for college. She is thinking of Chicago.

Yesterday I walked into the store and the girl was in the middle of describing a car accident her high school friend had had. It sounded awful. I told her and her mom that I didn't drive and thought it was too late to learn at my age. The daughter piped, "My Mom didn't learn til she was, like, 30 and she's like, really old now!" So I said, "Well, I'm 44." The mom said, "Same like me!"