Dedicated to my wife for mother’s day 2012

      

     I just finished assisting a customer that has shopped here for years.  During our conversation she said, "I have a confession to make to you."  We'll I thought, maybe she took something without paying, previously.  Maybe, we put something in her bag that she did not want or did not belong to her.  There are several more maybes but I won't bore you with what goes through a retail owner's mind.
    She says to me, " I could never tell you this before.  But now that I'm grown and more spiritual, I can tell you now." She told me that she has been shopping here with first her grandmother and then her mother, since she was 3 years old. (She looked to me to be in her 30's).  She said,” When I was a little girl I can remember the time I came into the store and saw you.” “I thought you were the most gorgeous person I’d ever seen.”  

       I started blushing and smiling.  Beverly (our reader) who was standing by me laughed in her special way and as she walked away she said I needed to stop doing what I was doing cause all the women are coming onto you the last few weeks.

      Well, this woman of the Watts family goes on to tell me that she would get in trouble every time she came into the store.  She would stare and stare and stare at me the whole time her family shopped. Her mother and grandmother would scold her and said, “it’s not polite to stare.”  She laughed and said, I still think you are really good looking!” (Blush, blush).

        I said, “ What you just said really makes me mad!  The same thing happened at my tenth year, high school reunion.  All these girls told me that they had a crush on me.”  I said, “Why didn’t all these people tell me way back then???”

       I don’t know about my looks but I’m flattered.  About what Beverly said, “you better stop doing what you are doing cause all the women are coming on to you the last few weeks.”  What I do know is that I enjoy listening to people, I always have.  I try to listen and understand where they are coming from and what’s going on with them at this period of time.  

       This last year has been very good for me.  The store, website, mail order, and shows have been very rewarding.  I’m in a really good spot and as happy as ever.  My family is healthy, and happy and growing.

     I am thankful for all this!  Most of this I have been able to enjoy because of my wife Debbie.  We have been together since high school.  We will be celebrating our thirty-seventh wedding anniversary this year.  She is a great mother to our children and a wonderfully happy, new grandmother.  I thank her for sticking by me all these years and helping me to understand how wonderful life can be!

To all of you that I have encountered on this journey, thank you for the sharing of your experience, with mine.

Richard