Wal-mart greeters don't greet you anymore.
Walking through the mall today, I had to pick up some film for the school's yearbook committee. I need to take some pictures of various sports, and while I really prefer digital photography, I just can't get the same results as I do with the SLR camera.
Just the same, the Wal-mart in my local mall is usually a zoo. In fact, it attracts the worst shoppers in general. But it actually wasn't that busy today.
For the most part, the Wal-mart greeters are an old bunch; usually aged 45-60, looking rather dejected, and really never smiling. They attack you if you are carrying any sort of shopping bag, trying in vain to attach a little green sticker to it. Before they used to try and seal the bag, in some grandiose effort to curb shoplifting. Now they just stick it on the side, sometimes without even saying anything.
But since it wasn't busy today, and being in a decent mood, I figured I wouldn't blow by the greeter today. Today, I imagined, I would actually greet them back. So I walked slower when I hit the entrance to Wal-mart, took a deep breath and said "Hello" to the senior citizen in the ridiculous blue vest.
He blinked. And then blinked again. He looked down at my hips on either side, checking to see if I was carrying a shopping bag. I was not. With a dazed and confused look, he nodded back and turned away sharply.
Wal-mart greeters don't greet you anymore.
Something that won't fit in a node, because I:
A) Don't feel like noding it in full, and
B) Isn't really long enough to be noded
... but an old term for a cod fish was a "marblehead turkey", unless you were from Cape Cod, in which case it was a Cape Cod turkey. In fact, if you were from anywhere in America but Albany for a time, fish was sometimes known as Albany beef. And people from England called some fishies "two-eyed steak".
Why do I know this? Because Tyler knows this.
Tyler being a mildly autistic student at the high school I teach at.
I'm still looking for a teaching job in Winnipeg, by the way. I'm giving up my full-time gig here in Ontario to move 2200 km to be with the one I love.
So if anyone has any connections to the education system in the fine city of Winnipeg, lemme know ASAP.