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One summer day when I was six I went food shopping with my mother. My grandmother couldn’t come to watch me that day, so I had to go wherever my mother went.

We walked to Nostrand Avenue, where all the stores were situated. First stop, Ebinger’s bakery for a small rye bread, then to the A&P for some more serious grocery shopping.

While she was picking out baked potatoes, my mom decided that she had been short-changed by the lady in the bakery. How this notion suddenly occurred to her, I do not know. Instinctively, however, even at such a young age, I realized that this was going to be bad news.

For me.

“Hold out your hand,” she instructed. After which she placed said change into it. I then closed my hand into a tight fist.

“Go back to the bakery and get my money,” she instructed me, and then turned and walked towards the meat section.

I know I was only six, but please do not go judging my mother. This was a different time. Everyone knew one another (although my mother liked no one). No one had yet heard of the Beatles. The Mets had just completed their first season. Kennedy had just become President.

The biggest problem with my mission was that I did not know a thing about money, nor even how to count it. I didn’t even know what my mother meant by ‘change.’ All I was certain of was that if I did not come through for her in this matter, there would be hell to pay.

So I walked down the block, pushed open the heavy glass door of the bakery (no easy task), and waited for the demon woman who had cheated my mom to notice me, as I was so short that I was completely out of her view.

After a few minutes of grown ups passing me in the line, someone was nice enough to point me out to her.

“Yes, hon?” she said. I hated being called ‘hon.’

While standing on my toes, I stretched out my arm and poured the money onto the glass counter.

“My mom says it’s wrong,” I squeaked.

She counted the money.

“I gave her a small rye. The change is correct, hon…” There she went with that ‘hon’ business again.

“My mom says it’s wrong,” I repeated nervously.

The woman counted the change back into my hand.

“$1.19 for the rye. A penny makes $1.20, then a nickel make $1.25, plus three quarters make $2.00,” she explained.

I didn’t know what hell she was talking about. Nor did I care; I just needed her to give me more money.

“But my mom says…”

“Tell your mom to come talk to me,” she said, rather abruptly.

Big help. Why don’t you try telling my mother what to do, I thought.

How could I go back empty handed? But I had no choice in the matter. After a few minutes of staring at the spot where the cashier had been standing, I turned around and walked dejectedly back to the A&P.

God help me.

I roamed around the store, only half-heartedly searching for my mom, my head down. Defeated. An hour earlier my biggest fear was that Wile E. Coyote would catch up to the Road Runner.

One grew up quickly in those days.

I finally found her at the register, asking the cashier to weigh the grapes again, but this time with her hand off the scale. Standing behind her in silence, I was dreading the explosion that was about to occur. Finally, she turned around and spotted me.

“She wouldn’t give me any more money,” I whispered, my voice quivering.

My mom stared down at me for awhile; loading up a right cross, I assumed.

“Oh, that’s okay,” she said pleasantly. “After you left, I realized she was right all along.”

Excuse me?!!??? I thought, outraged. You realized WHAT? When? What the hell?

“Here,” she said. “You want Life Savers?” She took a roll from the wire candy display. She must have been feeling guilty.

She had to be kidding. Life Savers? After what she had just put me through? It was going to take something a lot better than Wild Cherry Life Savers to buy MY forgiveness, after that ordeal!

I looked up at her, and in my most outraged voice-as I took the candy from her hand-asked,

“Can I watch Bugs Bunny when we get home?”

“Okay,” she responded.

I sure showed her!