Mama-Come-Lately

At the grocery store I seem to visit almost daily (sometimes, I admit, out of boredom) there is a checkout guy who likes to sing. He’s quite good, and funny, and even if I don’t go through his lane, hearing and seeing him never fails to cheer me up or make me happier.

He’s always at the self-checkout lanes, which I can’t always go through, but yesterday I did. We got to talking about the baby, the baseball playoffs (our team is in the running) and the other kids he sees. Then he started laughing kind of hard.

Seems one day he had a little boy of about six in his lane, and he sang him “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” a song the little boy did not yet know. This guy likes to change the words to the songs he sings, and that’s one of the reasons it’s so fun to hear him.

That night, the boy’s dad was delighted to hear him sing the song, though he was puzzled as to why, instead of peanuts and Cracker Jack, he sang, “buy me some chitlins and mustard greens.”