Stopped at a gas station recently. The printer at the gas pump was out of paper so I had to go inside for a receipt. Customer A, a gentleman with two 24-packs of beer, allowed me in line ahead of him, which was quite thoughtful of him. So when Customer B, a lady carrying a few rather large bottles of booze and a single roll of toilet paper, approached the line, I was inclined to pass the favor along and let her in ahead of me.

Customer B put the bottles and the roll on the counter. She asked for the price on each item. I didn’t quite catch the price of her adult beverages, but the roll of toilet paper rang up at $1.39. She said that $1.39 was kind of expensive.

The clerk said, “Yeah, but when you need it you need it.”

She said, “I don’t need it that badly.” She set the roll off to the side, presumably to be returned to the shelf.

She proceeded to ask how much a “number twenty-nine” cost. The clerk said five bucks each. She asked for two.

I didn’t know what exactly a “twenty-nine” was until the clerk reached over to a counter display full of various lottery tickets and selected two from slot #29.

In light of my last post, I shudder to think about what Customer B valued. Maybe she was sharper than I thought, because the saint of a clerk dropped the price of the toilet paper to a buck even.