Big box home improvement stores have established military veterans appreciation days by giving all present and former military personnel discounts on purchases made during Memorial Day and Veterans Day weekends. Active duty persons get a discount every day. It's a good way to give recognition to our soldiers for the work they do for the nation.

Last Veterans Day my wife, Merrilee, who didn't serve in the military received a $51 Veterans Discount on a freezer she bought from a DIY store. What she did have was an old fishing vest that she wore because the weather was a bit cold that day. As fishing jackets go hers was one that had obviously been used on many a fishing trip by some codger who loved the jacket with all its pockets, zippers, flaps, and buttons arrayed over it entire exterior. Fishing can be a serious business, after all. When you are up to your hips in a stream you need to have every lure, hook, and lead weight you can stuff on your person. The fishing jacket fills that need very well, thank you.

Merrilee loves her fishing vest. Its slightly worn appearance betrays its many years. I sort of think its vague decrepitude is part of its appeal for her. As a youngster she frequently fished streams and lakes in her northwestern home state, sometimes alone, sometimes with a favorite cousin several decades her senior. She seems to delight taking the vest from her closet when the weather cools. I think it briefly takes her back to those days when she was a little girl fishing in a stream.

Sometimes you don't catch any fish.

Whether it was because the weather was cooler or whether it was because the shopping trip was to buy a sub-zero freezer, Merrilee wore her beloved fishing vest to the store. I was dressed in cut offs, a thin grey T-Shirt, and 8 year old tennis shoes that I've worn through 2 home remodels and hours of yard work. In other words, I looked like a slob. Or if my thinking about this shopping trip is right, I looked like someone who needed 24 hour care; ambulatory, not visibly disabled, but still needing watching.

We chose the freezer we wanted and went to the checkout counter to pay for it. I should mention that in the course of our long marriage we have fallen into a sub-conscious routine. If there is no line for a cashier, I pay for the purchase. If there is a line of people waiting, Merrilee waits while I wander off a few steps away to look at something, anything to distract me. Today there was a line. Merrilee waited. I wandered off.

Merrilee is paying. I'm somewhere else

Merrilee gave the cashier the purchase order, swiped her credit card through the card reader and asked if the Veterans' Discount would be applied. She reached into her vest to pull out the proof of service documents. The cashier reached across the counter, not to take the document but to gently pat Merrilee on the arm. "Of course, the discount will apply, Dear". She didn't bother to look at the DD214. The transaction completed, she reached over the counter again, patting Merrilee on the arm, "Now have a nice day, Sweetie".

Driving home with the freezer in the back of our pickup we talked about the cashier's overly familiar behavior which I thought was unusual until I glanced at Merrilee and saw the fishing vest. It was clear enough: The cashier thought the fishing vest was some kind military utility vest.

This one is for bullets.          This one is for bait

She must have thought that Merrilee was a veteran from the Viet Nam era; and the guy who was with her, the doofus in the sloppy clothes wandering around staring at everything was under her constant care. "Now have a nice day, Sweetie".