The sad guy with the birthday cake

At the line at the supermarket my wife and I were trying to apprehend our hyper active daughter who was simultaneously singing at the top of her lungs, dancing in the shopping cart and attempting at the same time to grab a candy from the shelf next to the nice lady at the cash register. Behind us came a young man with big glasses and a sad eyes behind them and placed an ugly white vanilla cake with a pink “Happy birthday Lonny” in the middle of the oversized sugar roses. My daughter has stopped singing said “Hi dear!” to the guy and then slapped with her tiny hand heavily on the plastic cover of the cake producing a loud noise, a blush on my wife’s face and my fast reaction to stop the second slap on the cake. “Sorry”, my wife said. “Sorry”, I said. “Sorry my dear”, my daughter screamed with joy.

The guy said to us with obvious embarrassment “Oh, no problem, no problem at all”, then to my daughter “You are cute little girl, what’s your name?”

By that time the news papers stand was the target of the little hands, so the nice man did not get to know my daughter’s name.

Later in the car, after we repeatedly instructed my still singing daughter what things aren’t allowed in the supermarket, my wife told me that the young man with the unfortunate birthday cake was perhaps a social worker who was taking the cake to a house for underprivileged kids. She is a child psychologist who works with many of these kids.

“Perhaps”, I said, because it was ten minutes to seven P.M. and I’ve noticed several magnetic access cards hanging on his neck,”it was one of the computer dorks from the bank building next door”. He and his co-workers are going to have a birthday party next to the water cooler”.

Perhaps none of us had guessed his occupation. I think it is interesting how we bend what we see around us around what we really are.