Passing the time

As I waited for the clerk at a store to change the battery on my mom’s watch, the janitor stopped to chat with her.

Not being a regular in that department, she had trouble getting the watch back off. She enlisted the help of the custodian who finally got the back off.

I said to himi, “You’re good for something.” He said,”Don’t tell my wife. She would find more things for me to do.”

A conversation ensued while the clerk finished the watch. He said cleaning up ketchup off the floor was difficult, which he had just done. “Cooking oil is the worst.”

The conversation wound its way to different topics until the clicker came where there is a connection. You know a relative or someone who knows the person. When he said that kids today don’t know how to repair things around the house and that his dad taught him. His dad was a custodian at Lynd School, he said.

I graduated from Lynd so I asked who his dad was. He told me and it turns out his family lived across the street from my husband’s family. For a brief time, his brother was married to my husband's sister.