Another Strange Conversation

A week ago I made a post about a strange conversation that I had at a recent conference. Here's ANOTHER strange conversation...

I was walking through the grocery store the other day when I passed, going down the cereal aisle, an aquaintance, a woman whose name I didn't even remember, who actually was closer to my wife than to me. She looked in my direction, we made eye contact, and as I passed her I said, "Hi. How are you?"

It's the simplest, most innocent of questions, really, and everyone knows what the reply is supposed to be: "Fine. How are you?" But I didn't get that reply. She stopped, blocking the aisle with her cart, looked me in the eye, and in a low, deadly serious voice said, "Thank you SO much for asking. I'm doing better."

"That's good," I said, trying to maneuver my cart around hers. "That's good."

"It's been hard," she said. "Maybe the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. I didn't know how I was going to get through it for a while."

I stared at her for a moment, blinking, before saying, almost as a statement, just barely as a question, "But you're doing better now?"

She shrugged, and a tear came to her eye. "What else could I do, right? It wasn't like I had a choice?" She grabbed my forearm with her hand and squeezed. "But I know you understand. Thank you SO much for asking. It means the world to me."

I blinked a couple more times before saying, "Well, take care of yourself. That's important in times like these. And I'm really glad to hear you're doing better." We said goodbye and parted ways, she headed up the aisle, me heading down.

I never had the heart to tell her that I had no idea what our conversation was about...