Wandering down the isles of the supermarket, I was multi-tasking.  Waiting for an oil change, and a perscription to be filled while also doing my grocery shopping for the week.  My mind was whirring and chaotic, flashing from products to sale tags and vaguely entertaining questions from my 3 year old.  Children are adept at getting one’s attention when they want it.  Even when they have it.  My son has me to himself today and I enjoy lavishing him with my affection, but when I’m shopping, its business.  Gabe has this way of breaking down barriers.  He has darling, expressive brown eyes and he has a way of lighting up his whole face when he wants you to look at him.  When that doesn’t work, he uses his body movements, quick and jerky to get the job done.  Sometimes he dances a little jig, sometimes he starts running while shifting his shoulders from side to side.  Today he’s trapped in the shopping cart.  Its nearing lunchtime and so all food looks interesting.  Gabe points at everything in the isle, the end-cap and since I am only vaguely aware of his show, he amps it up a bit.  Instead of pointing, he extends his entire arm with his whole hand outstretched at items over his head and out of reach.

“It looks like I have a friend here.”  Says an old voice in a familiar foreign accent.

I registered the comment after I had looked up in the man’s direction.  His rippled old skin is shining and soft looking.  Almost like cookie dough.  There was something mis-shapen about something around his mouth.  Possibly a faded old scar.  I tried not to stare.  His eyes search mine while I glance down at my son, still frozen like a statue with his arm outstretched like a tiny little Nazi giving a Hal Hitler.  I didn’t put it together just then, I tried to remember my manners.

“Gabe, say hello.”  I urge my son to notice the man and be polite.  That is what I do when I’m not sure what to say.  The children are the only reason older people ever talk to me.

The man seems a little arrogant or something, most people just want to smile and talk to my children.  Whatever he was looking for, he didn’t find it and he pushed on.  I was half-way down the isle when I noticed Gabe doing his arm thing again and I placed the old man’s accent, decidedly German.  Something went  cold and I stopped right in front of the hot chocolate.  What the?  No.  Is it possible I actually just met…no.

It seems like a hallucination or an apparition that spontaneously appeared in public.  Or maybe that actually happened.  I’m reading a book written by a Jewish psychologist on the Nazi doctors.  So maybe that is why my mind put that scenerio together the way it did.  But the thing is, I wasn’t even thinking about that book.  It had been days since I’d picked it up.  I know the mind is complex and in a way our memory can change to fit whatever we want it to.  I’m just wondering if it is possible to have met either an actual Nazi or some old Nazi sympathiser in Wal-mart?  I think any that survived would have way to much shame associated with their past to bring it up casually to a stranger in the grocery isle??  Or was that some kind of psychotic break from reality?  I’ll know if that guy shows up somewhere else to head to the shrink.  Or the neurologist.  Or maybe I’m reading too much into this…