Meltdowns and Mistakes

Ashley and I have been working a lot together the last week (which is part of why I haven't been posting as much lately.  Sorry, guys.  Will try to do better in the future.)  Mostly, work's been fine.
We do have the occasional child meltdown, which I always feel bad about.  A woman with three kids, two older boys and the youngest, a girl, came in. The girl was told she could choose only one thing, and she immediately began to cry.  (It was later in the day, so that might have been part of it.)  Watching her face crumble made me so bad for anyone. 
Another woman asked me for help finding something, so I walked with her to another part of the store to find her something.  She had thankfully asked for something I knew exactly where it was. 
"Do you get criers a lot?" she asked. 
"Just today."
"Oh, you're a saint!" 
Just hearing that (especially from a woman who looked like a Mom) made me feel a lot better. 
The next day, an older woman was looking for a certain thing, and I led her to that area of the store.  I noticed that some, though not every one of them, were marked 75% off.  When ever anything is marked like that, it goes on certain shelves, and this was not one of them.  I couldn't tell the woman that she wouldn't get her discount, but I took the others off the shelf and asked her to excuse me.
I went into the back and gave them to one of the other people working there, explaining things.  Then I called the boss and took directions from her about it.  ("Leave them in back, I'll fix it.")  And then I went back out on the floor and rung her stuff up for her. 
She told me as I was doing that she had worked as a head hunter for a large corporation for twenty some years, and that I had handled myself like a professional.  She said she was really impressed and she would totally hire me, if she could. 
And then this nice old lady just walked out. 
This is one of the things that I've been (happily) surprised with: people can be so nice!  (People have also been rude and difficult at this job, but I expected that.)  The nice people make me feel so good. 
So, nice people: keep shopping.  It makes our days better. 

The Date We Never Had

I went over to Micheal's house.  He was packing some stuff to go back to MSU, so I was helping him.  As he was looking for something, I happened to notice a Ponyo toy sitting out on a piano.  Last week, Michael had mentioned that he had an extra one and that I could have it.  I've actually never seen Ponyo, though I want to, since I'm a big fan of The Little Mermaid and Hayao Miuzaki.  I went over and squeezed its stuffed tummy.
And then I saw a bunch of framed pictures laying on the piano next to it.  I picked up the top one.  I was Michael's Dad, which slightly less crazy hair, and Michael's Mom, who I've never met.  She had crazy wild hair too, which made me wonder how Michael could be born with completely straight hair.  They were both smiling with a baby sitting in between them, Michael, I assumed.
The picture after that was similar, but instead of one baby in between, there were two.  Michael never mentioned siblings.  Had I just somehow missed that detail about him?  Maybe something had happened to the other sibling and Michael didn't like talking about it?  Maybe it was from a previous marriage, of, based on what the baby looked like, probably his mother?  I wanted to ask but I don't think there's any good way of beginning this topic.
I noticed then that there were no pictures on the actual wall of his house, anywhere.  It looked like a tornado had sweep through, which had distracted me to the lack of actual pictures on the wall.  I wondered if someone had tried to paint the walls recently or if they had moved.  It didn't make a lot of sense.
After that, we got into Micheal's car and headed over to a friend's graduation party.  The guy had just graduated from engineering at MSU and had found a job in Grand Rapids.  Kid was set for life.  Would probably be making five figures right out of college.  (What was I thinking pursuing English as a degree?)  I just graduated myself, but I figured no one actually had graduation parties to celebrate graduating from college.  With my Grandma being all sick lately and me not having anything exciting to say about where I was going, it's probably just as well, but now I have missed the opportunity to have one of these parties twice. 
I was a little nervous to go there, just because people would see me and be like, "Oh, you must be Micheal's girlfriend," when the truth was I was friends with his girlfriend Lisa.  But I didn't feel like it was my place to be picky. 
And, indeed, I totally called it, because everyone shook my hand and treated me as Micheal's girlfriend.  They asked where we had met.  Michael said through Lisa, and that got a few eyebrows.
It's actually a lie, the meeting through Lisa thing.  We met about six months before Michael and Lisa met.  I was sitting on a park bench reading Phillipa Gregory's The Constant Princess and Michael walked by, saw me, sat down, and then tried to pick me up.  No kidding.  We obviously did not end up dating, but it occurred to me then that if we had, this is probably what it would be like.  Again, I was wondering if I was going to regret this hanging out with Michael thing.
It was a normal, though sparely attended, graduation party.  The host's mother was very gracious to us (she knew Michael) and I helped myself to a Root Beer and chips and some Chinese noodles.  They had this interesting wooden servers that were like huge fork ends.  I joked that they were Wolverine servers.  A woman standing there asked what I was talking about, and I explained that they looked like the claws of Wolverine the X-Man.