Where everybody knows your name, part 2

One of the drawbacks of living in a lovely little close-knit urban neighborhood where you know 80% of the families with kids and always run into a friend when you're at the farmer's market is that inevitably, you will pop into the drugstore for your monthly HPT stock-up and spot the father of a classmate of your daughter's, waiting in line at the pharmacy counter with his two kids, two feet away from the HPT shelf.

You will consider turning right around and heading out of the store, but you literally have no other time when you can buy the precious tests, unless you risk running into a coworker at a drugstore near your office (way worse). So you will skulk in a neighboring aisle waiting for them to leave, like a guilty teenager trying not to get spotted buying condoms by a busybody neighbor, until you realize that their transaction is taking way too long and the ice cream in your shopping bag is melting. You will take a deep breath and make a mad dash, head down, darting out into the open just long enough to grab the familiar pink box, hoping that the argument the dad is having with the pharmacist will distract him from noticing what you're about, and that the older child will not recognize you without your daughter in tow. You will tuck the box under your arm while you wait in line at the cash register, and wave cheerfully at the little family as you leave the store.

You will realize later that you were being silly and that this dad probably could not have cared less if he did see you buying HPTs, if he even recognized the box at all, and even if he did, he probably would have forgotten about it before he got home. The mom, on the other hand, would definitely have known.