Front Porch: Walking the aisles at Costco can be a trip down memory lane

I now understand how to mark the passage of time. It’s by who you run into at Costco.

A few weeks ago, in one of the check-out lanes at the big box store, I ran into the man who was the second-grade teacher at Lincoln Heights Elementary School for each of my sons.

It’s funny, but he and I bump into each other every few years or so, at political events, out in the community … and now at Costco.

Once, my younger son, some years back when he was in his 20s, spent on-stage time with him when they were both appearing in a show at Spokane Civic Theatre. Sam kept referring to him as he did when he was a second-grader, Mr. Stokes. Mr. Stokes told him that now that they were theatrical colleagues, Sam could certainly call him by his first name.

Sam smiled and paused for a second as he looked at his teacher, and said, “Nope, can’t do it.”

I recognized him immediately when we were in the Costco line, even with the gray hair, and after mutual hellos, he asked, “How are the boys?” My turn to smile.

“Well,” I said, “the oldest boy just turned 50, and he’s fine.”

It was then that Carl’s former teacher kind of grabbed his chest and remarked how that’s a stab in the heart, making him feel old.

“How do you think I feel?” I said.

And we both had a little chuckle as we exchanged some conversation until I reached the cash register and had to get busy with my purchases.

Last year, a woman I’d never met before stopped me in an aisle at Costco and started up a conversation about Miss Chicken (she recognized me from my likeness that appears with this column).

Miss C was a feral chicken of my acquaintance that provided much material for my writing between 2009 and her death in 2020. It was an eye-opening experience for me (city girl) to have an up-close-and-personal relationship with a barnyard bird and to learn from her eventual adoptive mother Joan (country girl) so many things about chickens and how they make wonderful pets.

To that point in my life, what I knew about chicken was baked or fried. And when Miss C died of old age, after amazing care by my friend Joan, this newspaper even ran a photo retrospective of her life.

I told Joan that when I die, I want to come back as a chicken and live at her house.

It’s been nearly four years since she’s been gone, and people – friends and strangers – still occasionally (though less often now) make reference to her when we meet.

Back in the Adventures of Miss Chicken days, I was much more spry.

I am awaiting knee replacement surgery and can barely scamper after a piece of paper blowing across the driveway, no less a wary and fleeing chicken.

Ah, time …

Also at Costco, someone engaged me in a short conversation about our kids in the Lincoln Heights days, which were several decades and a whole new building ago. She seemed familiar, but I could not pull up a name to match her face. I kept hoping she’d mention her offspring’s name, which might trigger something in my brain – but, alas, she did not.

Instead of fessing up, I just tried to bluff my way through the conversation. I don’t know if I was convincing or she was just being kind and let it pass. Or maybe she didn’t remember my name either.

And I’ve also encountered old friends at Costco, people we’d drifted away from for no particular reason, and had a chance to catch up and, sometimes, reconnect beyond the boundaries of the store.

Yup, Costco is a good place to go for – sure, the jumbo packs of toilet paper, laundry detergent, food and hearing aids – but also for putting time into perspective if you wander the aisles long enough.

You never know what part of your own history you’ll encounter … and how it will have weathered with time.

Voices correspondent Stefanie Pettit can be reached by email at upwindsailor@comcast.net.