I had a great summer - only wore long pants twice...and no ties.  Best time this summer - a trip to Pictured Rocks National Shoreline with Diane.  Best news - Diane and I will be Grandma and Grandpa in January.  Best story - the Peter Policy.
 
True story.  Local grocery store - pretty big one with stores in several states.   This grocery store chain has gone Lutheran - they have adopted The Peter Policy.
 
One of those very warm afternoons we had early on this summer, mid-June, humid and in the 90's.  I'm standing in line when the nice elderly lady in front of my begins grumbling.  (I've discovered since turning 57 that 'elderly' is older than it used to be...)
 
There are two boys ahead of her with a pile of great looking kid food (chips, frozen gogurts, pop, candy...), an $18 tab and a mountain of loose change.  Somewhere between $17 and $18 worth of change to be...exact.  So I decided to help.
 
"WHAT IN THE WORLD IS TAKING SO LONG?  This is the slowest line I've ever been in..."  The lady in front of me begins to chuckle.  Others start laughing, too, when they see what's going on.  I try to defuse tense situations.  All the cashiers at this store know me - I do lots of grocery shopping, almost daily as a matter of fact.  It's true, you can ask Diane.  The boys are getting uncomfortable, especially Peter, one of my 8th graders-to-be come fall.  "Whatever you do, don't ask that kid what school he goes to!"
 
Now he's looking around the big lighted number 3 to see who is causing this disturbance, but by the look on his face, he already knows what he's going to see.  "Ohhhhhh mannnnnnnn...."  His mom is a friend who is currently on the Board; his older brothers and sister graduated from my school years ago, he's the youngest in the family, a family with a great sense of humor that loves to kid around, and there's an extended family that's going to hear about this too.  I'm there witnessing the entire episode, and Peter knows this will never, ever go away.
 
The cashier has finished counting the coins and tells Peter that the bill is $18 and change and he only has seventeen-something...  It gets better.  Peter scans the items, picks up one of the bags of chips, hands it to his cousin and says, "Go put this back and get the 2 liter bottle of ginger-ale instead."  Honestly - you can't make this kind of stuff up.  Those of you who know junior high kids are having no problem whatsoever believing this, are you?
 
The lady in front of me becomes unglued (no more chuckling), as the cashier actually allows the younger boy to run off with the chips.  I'm starting to laugh and cry at the same time.  But I don't care - it's mid-June, I'm wearing shorts and a t-shirt, there's a wonderful story unfolding, and I don't have any ice cream that's melting in my cart.  Hey, maybe the chicken will even be defrosted by the time I get out of here.
 
"Pete, how'd you guys get to the store...?  Really?  How long does it take you to walk that far?  You know, it's 95 degrees outside.  How many frozen gogurts you got in that box?"
 
"Ohhhhh mannnnn, we didn't think of that..."
 
Yeah, I called his mom when I got home.  But an older brother answered the phone which was even better.
 
"Wow, ha ha, I can't wait until supper time.  We're gonna have a blast with him!"
 
Over the summer, the story made it through Peter's entire family, around the school, to the basketball tournament in Palatine, and to his 8th grade classmates.  His teacher is making up a special math problem for the first week of school:  "If you go to the store and buy one bag of chips for $2.89, and a 2 liter bottle of pop for $1.56, and a box of frozen gogurts for $4.49, and....  How many pennies would you need to pay your bill?"
 
The Peter Policy?
 
Pete stopped me in the hallway this morning with all the other 8th grade boys around.  "Mr. Strohacker, you didn't hear the whole story about that grocery store thing, did you...?  Well, I was in the store a couple weeks later - my cousin and I had taken a bunch of bottles and cans back again...  They sort of know me up there now, and the cashier said that the lady behind me that day, the one that was in front of you, well, she actually got pretty angry and talked to the manager, and now they've got a policy that they won't accept that amount of change for such a large purchase...and it's in all their stores."
 
The Peter Policy.  Sounds downright Lutheran to me.
 
"Well, Pete, this entire unfortunate incident reminds me of one school I came to years ago that had a policy that kids couldn't wear their shoes backwards.  Not that many kids would or even could, but as the story goes, years before, an 8th grade boy had put his shoes on backwards and then tripped, breaking his arm in three places.  His parents threatened to sue, and so the Board wrote a page and a half policy on how to wear your shoes in school.  The Eric Policy..."
 
You know, sometimes no matter how hard you try, you just can't fix stupid...