This week, I was leaving Walmart when a voice called, “Ma’am!  Excuse me, Ma’am!”  I turned around to see my cashier chasing me down, waving what appeared to be a packet of seasoning.  “This is yours, Ma’am, you forgot it!”  I thanked her, thinking it was my fajita seasoning, and glad I wasn’t going to have a repeat of last week’s two Walmart trips.

Except that it wasn’t fajita seasoning.  It was buffalo wing seasoning.  Which the cashier insisted I keep, even though I insisted it wasn’t mine.  Maybe I paid for it; I didn’t care enough to check my receipt.

The point of the story:  last week I didn’t get all my groceries, and this week I got extra groceries.  It all evened out.

This wasn’t my only experience this week of situations evening each other out.

Also last Monday at Walmart, I was the victim of parking lot theft.  As in, someone whipped through a row, going the wrong direction, and stole the parking space into which I was just about to turn.  I was incensed!  How could someone be so rude — and to a lady with a baby in the car?!

Later that same shopping trip, I was having some difficulty unpacking my cart to pay for my groceries while holding a Burt Squirt who did not want to be in his carrier.  The man ahead of me in line noticed my struggle and then proceeded to unload my entire cart for me.  (Possibly this explains the lunch meat going AWOL.)

But see what happened?  Someone was rude to me, then someone was extremely kind to me.  It all evened out.

This of course reminds me of the Seinfeld episode “The Opposite” (quite possibly my favorite episode), in which George was down but goes up (by doing the opposite of his instincts), Elaine was up but goes down (thanks to Jujyfruits), and Kramer dubs Jerry “Even Steven” (because he loses a gig and then gets a gig).

That’s me!

(If only blogging about Walmart would reveal my comedic genius and lead to my becoming fabulously wealthy like Mr. Seinfeld.)

Yesterday afternoon Mr. Burt and I went to Lowe’s, and while we were hemming and hawing over which winterizer to get for our lawn, an elderly man whom I’d just watched have a very confused conversation in broken English with one of the employees about garden plants versus sunroom plants, approached me and asked, “You have shot?”

Not sure I’d heard him right, or, if I had, what exactly he was asking me, I said, “Pardon me?”

“Shot,” he repeated, and gestured with his not-a-garden-plant to my shoulder.  “In shoulder.  Shot for you and baby.”

“Oh!” I said, realizing he must mean a flu vaccine.  “Yes, I just had one last week.”

“Good,” he said with a nod and a grin, and then walked away.

But a moment later, he came back.  “I not get shot so you and baby have one.”

Now, it’s very sweet (not to mention very random and very funny) that this guy wanted to do right by all the pregnant ladies out there this flu season (I wonder if he’s stopping all the pregnant women he sees to share this with them?) I’m pretty sure the FDA or whoever recommended that the first vaccinations go to pregnant women and the elderly!  I hope this man, whoever he is, makes it through flu season okay!  And that his not-a-garden-plant lives.