The Slice: You can’t put a price tag on checkout-lane conversation

Apparently I am not the only one who interacts in the grocery checkout lane.

“About 25 years ago, I struck up a conversation with a gal in the checkout line at the old Rosauers on Trent in Millwood,” wrote Sue Quinn. “We found out that both of us were single moms getting ready for classes to start at SFCC. I was in Graphic Design and she was in Visual Media. Anyway, to make a long story short, I changed to her program and yes, today, we are still the best of girlfriends. We always talk about how we met.”

Francie Radecki shared this. “I had a cart full of items, and the young woman behind me only had a few. I told her she could go ahead of me. I looked at her. She looked familiar. We exchanged the ‘Where do you work?’ et cetera … She asked my last name, and I told her. She said, ‘I used to date your son.’ I told her he would soon be home from college, and she should give him a call. (I had liked her from the first moment I met her.) That was several years ago. They just recently enriched our lives with an adorably lovable little grandson.”

Carole Williams was in a South Hill supermarket shortly before Thanksgiving. The woman next to her in line noticed that Williams was buying a couple of bags of cranberries. She said she never bought them because she didn’t know what to do with them. That led to online recipe sharing.

Of course, not all checkout aisle exchanges are quite like that. Just ask Sue Hicks.

“My husband stopped at a grocery store in a part of town that we don’t usually frequent and a man approached him in the checkout lane and said, ‘Say, did you get any tattoos in prison?’ ”

Hicks’ husband, who has not done time, was unable to help the gentleman with his query.

Word power made easy: Jennifer Miller’s twin 3-year-old sons, August and Elliot, can’t seem to pronounce “olives.”

They say ah-vles.

And instead of “backpacks,” the boys say “pack-packs.”

Miller’s solution? “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.”

So don’t forget to put your ah-vles in your pack-pack.

Today’s Slice question: How do you react to country singers wearing cowboy hats?