Trip to Wal Mart: $1 in gas.
Supplies needed to finish Moogle head: $20.
Putting up with a second trip to the store today: Mental Anguish.
Being helped by a gorgeous girl I knew long ago at the checkout line: Priceless.

It's amazing how much I remember, sometimes. The only real conversation I had with this girl was in my physics classroom, when I was in 10th or 11th grade in high school. We really didn't chat about too much, except for potential career choices. I wanted to go into science, and she wanted to be a gym teacher. She said she would enjoy her work, and I wouldn't. At any rate, that day, years ago, was perhaps the first and last time I had spoken to this beauty of a girl. As young boys are wont to do, I fantasized about her quite regularly for some time; until the visions faded and she became more distant in my mind. She was never a girl I thought I could love, or like very much even - but she was, and still is, drop-dead gorgeous in every way.

I was wading through the mass of people at the Belle Vernon Wal Mart checkout aisles, until I stumbled upon the self-checkout lanes. Fantastic! No wait. And there she was, just a few feet from me, standing next to a (presumably) very lucky young man who probably makes love to her every night. It took some doing, but I tore my glance away from her, and made my way to an open lane. I slide up to a machine, and scan the two items I was picking up for my costume. Not one to pay with cash, I whip out my credit card and go to town on the machine.

beep
BEEEEEEEP

Whoa. I backed away from the machine in disgust, and turned to face the people behind me. There she was, with arms outreached, moving towards the credit card machine. I handed her my card, and lo and behold, our fingers mingled, if only for a brief second. My heart fluttered, and I wanted to grab onto her, and take her away for the evening - or more. I want something wild and fantasitc to happen, something sporatic and wonderful, something to remember my childhood by before it is gone with the rest of life's precious moments. And here, I didn't even remind her of who I was.

I saw her there, and I smiled.