My beloved and I are at the cashiers in the largest department store in her neighborhood. I am pulling things out of our basket when a tall and well-dressed man in his fifties leans over me to fetch some plastic bags close to the cash register. I get out of his way, but he takes my place right away. He puts a bunch of his things on the conveyer belt in front of our things. I struggle to pull the remainder of our stuff out of the basket and place it ahead of his things. As we are packing our stuff into bags, he is all over us once again. Tall as he is, his hands and elbows are in our faces all the time. By the time we are out of the store, I am fuming. “God be thanked that I have no truck with humans any longer,” I spit out at last. My beloved shakes her head. For better or worse, I always forget that she, too, is a human.