---
title: "Help in the grocery store"
date: 2026-03-19
url: https://learningischange.com/2026/03/19/help-in-the-grocery-store/
author: Ben Wilkoff
categories: ["Typewriter"]
tags: ["family", "Kindness"]
---

# Help in the grocery store

![SwiftScan Mar 19, 2026 8.48 AM.jpeg](/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/SwiftScan Mar 19, 2026 8.48 AM.jpeg)


## Transcript

A ne to had me this it in in th hand and borde cohool. After picking up my youngest son from school yesterday, he made

reasonable father that I am, I thought it sounded like the next right thing.

So, on the way home we stopped by King Soopers. Since we were already there, I figured we could pick up things to replenish items that my middle son andhis friends had been consuming daily school down the street, where there were free meals available. Tor lunch as they found their way to my house and away from their

Free meals at my house somehow feel better than free meals in the cafeteria. Except that they aren't quite free. I still have to but the sandwich meat and cheese regularly to make sure the boys can make multiple sandwiches per day.

After we picked up our last non graham cracker related item and as we tried to figure out why graham crackers weren't in the cracker one the step and the had a of fourth o

know how she picked us or how many people she had asked before op and a few items shovedinto the bottom carraire area. I don'

approaching us, but she asked us for help.

Initially I thought she was going to ask us to help her find something in the store and I was about to tell her that we needed help finding something as weel. But, instead she asked if we could help her to buy groceries. That was when I really saw her. She had her hair pulled back into a messy ponytail and it looked like she hadn't slept in a long while. I saw her child too. They were passed out a family in need of something, ashing for it kindhy while knowing but looked like they had recently been in a hot car. This was

that the answer was likely to

could I look at my own son beside me and sqy that he is more worthy of the $50 than they were in that moment?

I askedher to wait by the register while we went to find the graham crackers, which was the whole reason ior the trip. And as we walked to the cookie aisle after another kind woman pointed us in that dixection, I tried to figure out what, it meant that my instinct was not to ask questions or dig into the why of her story. I knew enough to see that she didn't have the same day that I had, and likely not even olose to the same life. I could do this, I can't change the fancists in charge of the covernment or the wax in Ixan over nothing. But, I can buy Groceries for a stranger.

So, we bought her two bags of flour, two large bags of potatoes,

I knew that the small amount of relief she felt walking out of the store with the food she meeded to survive would not change her sItuation, but it was anough to change her night. It changed mine too.