“Why don’t you help that little girl over there?” I looked around the appliance store, wondering what “little girl” the salesman was referring to. I had my three young children with me, one a babe in a stroller. Seeing no one else in the area, I realized he was talking about me. For heaven’s sake! I was thirty-two years old. Hardly a little girl. I was there to buy my first microwave oven, a big investment back in the early days of that miracle technology. I expected to be ta

“Go stand in that line and I’ll stand in this one.” My husband hates to wait in lines, especially at the grocery store. He is always delegating people, me or one of our kids, to hold a place in another line in case it moves faster than the one he’s chosen. This can get really embarrassing when he tells me, immediately upon entering the store, to jump in the nearest line while he grabs the “just a few” items he needs. Empty handed, I smile as others join me with their full car

“No! You are not going to lunch!” I threw my arms over the counter at the Department of Motor Vehicles and locked eyes with the woman standing behind it. Staring wide-eyed, she put her purse back in the drawer and slowly returned to help me. I had spent five hours going back and forth to our bank’s safe deposit box, looking for documents to prove my identity as a married woman. Social Security had left out that important bit of information when they transferred my data to the

Oh, look at the eagle! It’s so quiet and peaceful, I could drift along for hours.” “Hey! What are you doing back there! We’re all supposed to be paddling. No wonder it seemed like we were doing all the work!” Sheepishly I grabbed my paddle and began to dip it into the pristine Alaskan lake, more vigorously each time my husband glanced back to check on me. I’m not usually one to shirk my responsibilities, but I had to admit I was taking advantage of being in the back seat of o