So I drive into town this afternoon and, as usual, I have a kazillion things to do. Clever woman that I am, I make a careful list of all my necessary duties and purchases.

    I put the list and a few cheques in a bank deposit envelope in my purse. My reasoning here being that I won't lose my list somewhere in the seething, unspeakable morass that is my purse.

    I think you can all predict what I did.

    Yep, I got to the ATM, put my bank card in, punched in the amount of my deposit, licked the envelope and sent my cheques and my carefully crafted list into the maw of the bank machine.

    This would be after banking hours, of course.

    I have actually done this before.

    Some folks learn from past mistakes.

    Others do not.

    Well, I knew I wanted to buy paint for Moby Tabletop, the top of our summer eatin' out table which has, due to unfortunate and totally unforeseeable circumstances, been living until recently at the bottom of my pond. So heigh ho heigh ho it's off to the hardware store I go.

    This is a very small village, and normally I know everyone in town, but the clerk at the paint counter is someone new to me, looks to be a summer student hire.

    That, of course, does not stop me from relaying to him the comedy of errors which is my lost list. Then I continue babbling and tell him that all the rustproof metal paint he has in stock is in colours that sap my will to live. I tell him I want Monet blue.

    His face brightens, and at that moment I know I have found the one paint counter clerk who loves colour. Not only that, but he tells me he has a way that he can mix metal paint into a colour I would like.

    Be still, my beating heart.

    So we pour over paint samples and we find something that appeals to me and he sets to work.

    We are bonding.

    At that moment, a young kid and his mom come up to the counter. At one end of it is a locked case with watches and knives. The boy has birthday money and he wants to buy a pocket knife. The first knife he chooses is large enough that he could gut an elephant should the need arise.

    The boy barely wrestles the blade back, the spring is powerful on a knife that big, and I feel compelled to watch with the same mix of horror and fascination I feel when I go by a car wreck. I don't WANT to look, but I have to. If fingers are going to be sliced off in my presence, some primal urge compels me to watch it happen.

    I mention sotto voce to the paint clerk that watching young kids play with knives just ties my stomach in knots.

    Now what I was EXPECTING him to reply was something either along the lines of "me too" or, "nah, kids know how to handle themselves."

    Not even close.

    Calmly, the clerk looks at me and tells me that when he was a young boy three things fascinated him--knives, flashlights and magnets.

    He said he had thought about this a lot and decided that it had great spiritual significance. The knife signified slicing through the falseness, the flashlight signified illumination of the truth, and the magnet stood in for yin-yang, the eternal dichotomy at the center of existence.

    You could hear a pin drop as I, the mother, and the young boy looked at this guy. A zen-like meditation on his childhood obsessions was NOT what we were expecting to hear.

    Then, matter-of-factly, he showed the kid the safe way to open the knife, the paint machine stopped shaking my can, and I took my purchase and I left.

    Just another day in the neighbourhood.