Trauma at Meijer

This is my firts post to the Horizon's blog and if you haven't guessed already, I will be posting on Wednesdays. My name is Michelle and I have had the wonderful privilege of working at Horizons for over three years now. I am one of the RDI(tm)consultants here and am also the Assistant Director. It has been a wonderful journey and I look forward to many more years working here.

A little about myself: I am married to a wonderful man with whom I share two beautiful girls. Our daughters are 3 and 1 so I too have development right under my nose. It's amazing to see the tremendous strides they make daily and how they can wake up one morning and suddenly have entered the next stage of life. My three year old suddenly became a preschooler. She no longer has the toddler look or feel to her. At the same time my 1 year old became a toddler, she is no longer my little baby. When does this happen? I believe it literally happens over night.

So onto my trauma at Meijer. Yesterday I was shopping with my girls when I get in line to check out. There is a man checking out with one bag of Jelly Beans. The cashier looks at him and says "$4.68". He looks at her and with sternest voice and with his finger waving away says "$4.68, it can't be $4.68. Get a manager up here right now!" In the mean time I'm revving up my grocery cart, ready to run him over if he so much as touches the young cashier. Things get resolved and he comes back to talk to all of us in line. "Check your receipt," he says, "that girl doesn't know what she's doing!" I just smiled and said, "Thanks, have a Merry Christmas". To that he walks away and then turns around and says to me "I'm Scrooge". To that I smiled and thought to myself "yes, sir, that's what you are!"

In a moment that most of us would have handled with ease, this man decided it was worth getting extremely upset about and worth ruining this poor cashier's day. This got me to thinking again about what is important in life and to what could we give the honor of a "crisis moment". Children having a temper tantrum or moving at snails pace is a moment that will quickly pass and is not worth stressing over. An extremely sick child or the death of a family member is what I percieve as a moment that can put us into crisis. Take time to think, is your perspective of what is worthy of stress right now on track or are you overreacting over the small things? This is certainly the time of year that things become more stressful than usual. Take time to relax, reflect and enjoy life and don't become the next trauma at Meijer.

Happy Holiday's and until next Wednesday,
Michelle