All Grown Up

It was another wonderful Grammy day, with the smell of fall in the air and a crisp chill that made wandering the neighborhood pleasant. Petra and I were getting ready to head out, but she had to get “everything she needed” first.

Everything she needed included some new lip gloss I had just given her, two bottles of sparkly nail polish and a tiny stuffed unicorn. All of which she put in her black Gucci bag, a gift from the Universe several years ago. She slung her bag over her shoulder like any fine woman would do, and we headed out for a day of errands in the neighborhood.

She decided to take her pink tricycle, so she slung her bag over the seat and off we went. We headed to the park first, where we watched the squirrels going crazy over the hundreds of fallen acorns on the ground. We searched for treasure in the sand, as we always do, and found three silver beads, a popsicle stick and an empty Corona bottle, which we filled up repeatedly and moved sand from one side of the park to the other.

It was nearing time for me to catch my bus, so we headed to Family Dollar to get a treat. Petra stopped her bike, declaring she saw a “treasure.” She picked up a discarded scratch off lottery ticket, which had shiny green dollar signs on it. She asked me to put it in her bag, so I did and we went along our way.

We arrived at the shopping strip and Petra noticed a bike rack with a bike chained to it.

“Let’s park here.” She declared, maneuvering her tricycle into position. She dismounted, grabbed her purse, hiked it up on her shoulder and into the store we went. She chose sour gummy worms and I grabbed a carton of coffee. We reached the check stand and Petra tugged on my shirt.

“I’ll pay for this Grammy.” She said.

“Oh. Okay. Do you have money in there?” I asked, as she started opening her purse. By this time the cashier had rung up our order and given me a total. I was curious to see what she pulled out of her purse, as was the cashier. I slipped him the necessary cash on the counter, while Petra was digging for her money.

“Yes. I have money.” Just like every woman in a check out line, she rooted through her purse until she found what she was looking for.

“Here you go” She said, quite pleased with herself, as she pulled out the discarded lottery ticket and proudly handed it to the cashier.

The cashier and I both looked at each other and smiled. The ticket did have dollar signs on it.

“Well thank you,” He said to Petra, who was beaming up at him. Then he grabbed a few pennies and reached down to her. “Here you go ma’am, here’s your change.” She took her change and dropped them in her purse, then strutted out of the store like any fine woman who had just completed a shopping spree.