I have said for some time now I like animals better than I do people.

Being an introvert is the primary cause of this, but I blame people as well.

Humans can be rude, inconsiderate, and maddening.

While there’s been a time or two I have threatened to sell the pups on eBay, I still prefer their company over a lot of folks.

The cat, on the other hand, can do no wrong.

Most of my interactions with people have left me feeling drained, irritated, and sometimes furious.

All I have to do to prove my point is go somewhere in public or turn on the news.

People, it seems, have gotten to where they don’t care for their fellow man anymore.

There’s a prevalent attitude of selfishness and apathy.

And anytime I somewhere, I find myself not liking people more and more.

“You can’t do that, Kitten,” Mama said one evening.

“Oh, yes I can!” I declared. “Mama, these people were so rude and pushy – they had no manners! They had no home raising at all.”
“Maybe they didn’t, but you can’t go around thinking the world is awful.”
“Yes, I can.”

Mama just doesn’t understand. She goes through life thinking people are inherently good and kind.

I have no idea where she got that notion, but that’s how she thinks.
I am more of a realist and probably witness more of the negative behavior.

“We need people,” Mama said. “You may think you don’t, but you do.”
I wasn’t going to argue with her; this was a point where she and I would just have to disagree.

But Mama has this annoying little way about being right about every stinkin’ thing and I was about to learn how I do need people.

Even though I normally try to avoid going anywhere on a Friday evening, I had ventured out on this particular one.

By myself.

Something that makes Mama very anxious and upset – remember, she called the po-po on me once when I was out with a friend and her mom.

It was 4:30 when I left, and I thought I had plenty of daylight left.

I was planning on going three places when I left but by the time I got to the second one and was in the throes of grocery shopping, I realized I was too tired to go to a third store.

I was tired. I was hungry. My back was achy, and I think I was having a ding dang hot flash right there on the paper towel aisle. My blood sugar was dropping mighty fast and I was thirsty.

Then I realized I had forgotten something that was at the other end of the store.

“I better get skinny doing all this walking,” I thought to myself.

It was nearly dark by the time I was heading to my car.
I decided to just stop to get some gas and go home.

I put the groceries in the back, careful to not squish the bread or crush the Lay’s and put my buggy up.

I pulled up at the pump and reached for my purse. It wasn’t on the passenger seat.

Thinking I put it in the backseat, I hopped out and looked.

Nope. It wasn’t there either.

Did I put it the trunk with the groceries?

No.

I got back in my seat and pushed the “phone” button on my dashboard, but I couldn’t call anyone because my phone was in my purse, wherever that was.

I started to panic.

Everything was in my purse.

Debit and credit cards, my phone – my phone had photos on it that were not uploaded yet. But it was just a sense of overwhelming panic.

I had never, not ever, left my purse somewhere.

If anything, Granny used to say I was like Sophia from The Golden Girls.
“Short?”

“That, and you always got your cussed purse with you just like she does.”

The whole plot line of Adventures in Babysitting revolves around Chris Parker leaving her purse at the house where she’s babysitting, something that always bothered me.

“How does one forget their purse?”

It was foreign to me. I always had my purse and my routine was to put my purse on my shoulder as I walked the buggy back to the cart return.

Somehow this time I forgot.

I raced back to the store across town. I was in full blown panic mode and praying my purse was safe and sound.
I drove by where I had parked and didn’t see it in the parking lot or in any of the buggies in the corral.

I parked and frantically ran towards the store, asking the employee collecting buggies if he had seen a purse. He had not.

I felt sick.

Somehow, the normally crowded customer service area was clear, and I was able to rush right up the counter. “Has someone turned in a purse?”

The clerk nodded. “What color is it?”

“Grey.”

“It’s in the office, it’s a little wet but it’s here. A little elderly man found it right after he left the store and brought it in,” the clerk continued. “He said he was worried the wrong person would find it.”

A stranger had found my purse in the buggy and promptly turned it in.

A selfless act, a kind act. An act of being concerned with their fellow man.

“See,” Mama said. “There are still good people in the world.”

Indeed, there truly are.