Listen, I’m cynical. I know this about myself and as such, I don’t really care much. I mean, I try to be a good girl who cares a lot and believes the best in people, but hell’s bells. The woods are dark and deep. So what if I get a little dark and deep myself from time to time?

This is, afterall, what I’m given to work with: Today at the grocery store I shopped around two, uh, decidedly “granola” people. The Seattle area seems to attract the type, for whatever reason. Very earthy, very hippie. They walked carefully from aisle to aisle literally agonizing over each ultra-healthy, super earth-friendly, 5000% organic choice, piece by piece, little by little, until they had amassed a cart overflowing. The cart would have been a dead give away of their tree hugger status alone, forget the hemp clothes, counter culture haircuts and open-toed sandals despite the snow falling outside. I only just noted it in passing. I didn’t have to linger long to get the gist.

Naturally, only 3 of the 20 checkout stands were actually open and functioning and naturally I ended up in line right behind Johnny and Susie Earth. I thought I was being smart and practical by picking that line. The other two were chock full of carts bearing children or old people flipping through coupon books. The carts weren’t bearing the old people. They were just standing around on their own two feet. For the most part. But as I took my place in line behind them I realized why theirs was the smallest line. Even the coupon-clipping grannies were preferrable to this lot.

You had to see it to believe, but take my font for it, it was a sight to behold. This girl stood there with her arms resting on the check writing platform, supporting her young, lovely makeup-free face, occasionally twirling her multi-colored, funky cut hair and carried on a totally intimate conversation with the checker. Or, I should clarify, she attempted to carry on such a conversation. This checker who looked all of twelve looked befuddled and decided to stick to the task at hand as he was not, as far as he had previously been told, paid to make idle chit-chat, much less intimate chit-chat with a hippie who believes the whole world is one, big happy family and as an added bonus she has no concept of personal boundaries. He looked nervously from her face to the organic extravaganza passing deftly from his hands to the bags and made small guttural noises that she gleefully – and obliviously – accepted as the intimate conversation she feels entitled to.

Meanwhile, her granola boyfriend fixed a look of stern concentration upon his sun-darkened brow and unloaded the cart of its body-earth-conscience friendly burden. He –

Okay, look. I could have chosen to move, I understand. I didn’t have to remain in the line. But you have to appreciate, you have to fully grasp the picture these two painted. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t look away. I didn’t even move to put my own groceries on the belt. Not that I could anyway. He sort of made it difficult. I was transfixed. This guy had some weird logic. I don’t know what it was, I didn’t get it and he was done before I could reason it out. He went through the cart meticulously, picking out things to set up on the belt and then putting them back in favor of something else more — what? Organic? Was this a caste system? Were the canned goods thought to be too impure and over processed to be placed on the belt so near the wholesome and healthy wheat grass juice in the biodegradable bottle? I don’t understand!

Just before he finished his careful routine his best girl says to him, “Oh honey! Are we going to give him the bags?” So he dives back into the cart and pulls out, I shit you not, 10 or so green hemp cloth bags. He hands them off to checker boy who looks as though he’s barely hanging on. I finally find my feet and start unloading my own burden. As I laid out my own selection of processed foods in earth-decimating packaging, I of course continued my eavesdropping. She stopped the checker suddenly as a revelation hit her. She inquired, loudly, about Toys for Tots. She wanted to know where they had gone. He told her he didn’t know and tried to move on. She seemed to take affront at his answer and began explaining how she had seen them there earlier. He allowed that they may have been there earlier, but he was simply saying he didn’t know where they were presently and she was more than welcome to ask the manager. She would have continued , but her — husband? boyfriend? friend? life partner? companion? Yes. Her companion whispered something in her ear and touched her elbow. She immediately withdrew and mumbled something nonsensical about having seen them there earlier.

As entertaining as this all was, it only got better. With a look of relief, checker boy announces that she had plenty of bags and hands her back the couple extras he had left over. She clapped her hands in glee and said, “Oh yay!”

Clearly, this made her day. She lived for it. She was a hippie over the moon. She was basking in the moment. I’m not even kidding. What she totally missed, or chose to miss, was that the twelve year old checker threw away the plastic bags he had started to bag her groceries with, before she remembered and lugged out her earth-friendly hemp cloth bags.

She missed it, but I didn’t.

I am so glad someone is looking out for this planet, so I don’t have to. I am so glad those people who are looking out are doing it for all the right reasons and not just to be, you know, pretentious cretins who put on a big self-indulgent act for the attention and validation. It warms my cockles and makes me sleep so much better at night.