Strange Encounters at Hy-Vee

Last night Mel had some coworkers, a former coworker, and the friend of the former coworker over. After chatting for a bit, we got around to ordering some pizza a little after 8:00. Well, we didn’t have a whole lot in the house to drink, so on our way to get the pizza, Mel’s coworkers Anita (who is a former student of mine), Penny (Anita’s sister), and I went to Hy-Vee to get some beverages and ice cream. While we were trying to decide which type of beer to purchase, two men approached us and tried to help us make a decision. One of them grabbed a bottle of beer from the shelf and started plugging the beer—one that included chocolate as an ingredient—as if he was a representative of the company! This was a bit odd. Eventually he and his partner started to walk off when they struck up a conversation with another man—one who was wearing a University of Georgia shirt bearing just the G logo of the school.

The man who promoted the chocolate beer said, “Go Bulldogs,” as the older man in the red University of Georgia shirt passed. The older man then said that he only bought the shirt because it was cheap. In fact, he had bought it quite recently and this was the first time he had worn it. The chocolate beer guy was apparently the first person who had recognized the shirt as representing the University of Georgia Bulldogs. The older man then told us that he says it’s a Green Bay Packers shirt for the color blind. Anyway, the other two men left and we were stuck in a conversation now with this other man. Meanwhile, we still had not picked out a type of beer to drink. Penny then indicated that she’d drink anything, except for Guinness. This new guy than said that he literally would drink any beer since he collects beer labels. He had recently been to some beer festival in Madison, Wisconsin. At this point we quickly picked up a six-pack of beer—Killian’s Irish Red—so we could get out of the Hy-Vee and get to Pizza Hut to get our pizzas.

Running into strange people when buying beer at Hy-Vee wouldn't have surprised me too much if it had been later at night, but it was only 8:30!