I was in the grocery store the other day, and ended up in line behind a slow-moving elderly couple. The cashier rang up their total, and the old woman handed the cashier a gift card. I wasn’t paying close attention — I think she said something about a son or relative giving them the card — and then there was an awkward pause. The screen still showed a balance of forty dollars. The old woman sagged. Then she started taking items back out of the basket while the line waited.

My mind flashed back to an event from last Autumn. A neighbor had invited us to a Native event here called the Big Time, where several tribes gather and sing their traditional songs, tell their traditional stories, and perform their traditional dances. After the dancing is a feast, and they announced that elders should go straight to the front of the line. I don’t tend to think of myself as an elder, though I’m in my 60’s now, and so I got in line at the end. The people around me smiled and shook their heads, and told me and my wife to go to the front of the line. They insisted.

It felt strange — and it was surprisingly moving — to be singled out and honored in that way.

How different from our culture, where elders have to stay spry, or they get trampled, warehoused, and buried. Where they have to live on fixed incomes of ever-devaluing dollars, and are given helping gift cards by relatives that are too small to pay for food or other essentials. Where they have to take items out of their grocery basket while the cashier forces herself to wear a stone face as she enforces Corporate Law — taking food without paying is Theft, which is a form of Treason against Free Market Capitalism — and the people stuck in line behind tap their feet impatiently and glare.

“Excuse me,” I said, not quite believing what I saw happening right in front of me. “Are you really taking items out of your basket?”

“I have no choice,” the old woman said. “I have to.” She didn’t seem angry, only tired and resigned.

“You don’t have to,” I said. I looked directly at the cashier. “Put it on my bill.”

The cashier thought I was the most generous person in the world. The woman behind me in line agreed. The couple stopped me on my way out of the store, and the husband wanted to shake my hand, and said they’d never seen anyone do something like that.

It felt good to help, but the excessive praise saddened me, and saddens me still. I put out forty dollars to help an elderly couple in an awkward spot. Forty dollars. It’s a little more than the cost of two tickets to the movies, with popcorn. It’s four bottles of inexpensive wine, not counting tax. It’s two cheap gifts for an office Christmas exchange.

They’d never seen such an act of generosity.