I hate the self-checkout lane.

I don’t know what I’m doing.
I’ve never been trained.
And every time I try,
One of my kids
Tries to help
By putting an item
Or more often, their arm,
In the bagging area
Which prompts the actual employee
To come over
And override
Whatever I did wrong,
While I try to look
Like I knew what I was doing.
Even though
I’m thinking about how
I should have just had them
Help me in the first place.
But since we live here and now,
I have begrudgingly
Learned what to do
And what not to do;
Even though
I’ve still never been trained
And I’m still not an employee
And they’ve never
Given me a paycheck.

But today
I was at the UPS Store
And my cute friend was too.
And I had the opportunity
To show her how
To use the self-checkout
To return something
Because she wasn’t sure.

And as I walked over there,
The owner of the store
Told my friend
“She’s a pro at it!”
Referring to me…
Which is an embarrassing testament
To how often
I return things
From Amazon.

But anyway,
It got me thinking
About how many other things
I never wanted to learn
In my life,
But I got to learn them anyway.
And even though
I’m not an actual pro
At anything,
I will share whatever I’ve learned
With anyone who wants me to;
Because I am always grateful
When people share
Whatever they’ve learned
About the things
They never wanted to learn.

And I was thinking about that
Because this cute friend of mine
Has taught me so much
About love and loss
And how to hold on
During really difficult times –
Things she never wanted to learn
But she learned them anyway
And then shared about it.
And I’m so grateful for her.

Photo by Natalia S on Pexels.com