When I was a child, there was a man named Kelly that worked at our local grocery store. It wasn’t much of a fancy store, just your typical neighborhood grocery where you occasionally ran into a schoolteacher in the aisles. (That in itself was always strange to me as a kid, imagining that my teachers had lives outside the classroom.)
Kelly was probably in his 50s or 60s, and he worked at the end of the cash register, bagging groceries and tucking paper sacks in carts. All the sacks were paper then, and they smelled vaguely of wood and dust, and made a delightful crinkling sound when all smashed aside one another in the grocery cart.
I’ve never known someone as happy as Kelly, I don’t think. He sang, and his laughter was big and unapologetic. His skin was a deep brown, and I remember how bright his enormous white teeth shone against it. The best part for me was when Kelly handed out lollipops. Each time he saw me, he asked me my name, although he must have known it a hundred times over. I’m sure now that he asked me just so I would tell him, and he could tell me just what a beautiful name it was.
There was a resonant, deep joy about this man. I never realized it, really (and I imagine there aren’t many 7-year-olds contemplating such things, especially when faced with a delightfully sticky sucker to distract them). He was that guy that everyone has a story about – the guy that just manifested happy, in all its glory.
He bagged groceries. As an adult, I’m now struck by the complexity of everything that makes up my world, and I wonder how I’d feel about working at the local grocery store, helping people out to their cars with today’s super-mega-bulk packages of Charmin and strawberries and anti-bacterial wipes. In fact, there aren’t many Kellys anymore, what with self-checkout and warehouse clubs where bags are dispensed with altogether.
Would I want for more? He didn’t. Or at least, he didn’t appear to. Kelly might have had regrets, or dreams of something else. But you’d never know it in the way he smiled and sang and laughed and brought everyone along for the ride with him. It’s as though the simplicity of his day was just fine by him, and handing me that red sucker while I blushed and stammered my way through a meek “thank you” was the highlight of his week. Maybe it was.
I imagine Kelly’s life as a simple one. A fulfilled one, and surely not without sadness at times, but overall one of contentment and peace. A home of his own, friends, a card game on the weekends and family over for Sunday supper. And then Monday, back to the store and brown paper sacks and neighborhood gossip.
Kelly must be quite elderly now if he’s still wandering this rock. I find him cropping up in my mind often, mostly when I find it hard to believe that simple and unfettered happiness is something real. I hear him laughing. I nearly hear him telling me that whatever it is, it’s just not that big a deal.
I’m not much for fluffy inspiration in hollow places. But Kelly brings me back to simple tenets that somehow always seem to matter. Be helpful, be kind, laugh, give of yourself, lift others, be grounded, say nice things.
And as often as you can, give out lollipops.
