We all know that cheerleaders are supposed to be perky, happy, energetic and inspiring. They should have the attributes that make a person charismatic and memorable. However, the only cheerleader whose face I’ll ever remember is the sad one encountered a few years ago at a local high-school football game.

This girl didn’t smile the entire evening. In fact, she seemed to be on the verge of tears much of the time. She went through the cheer motions staring ahead blankly.  As her comrades did their best to convince everybody they were enjoying the shellacking being suffered by the team, the sad cheerleader remained detached, deadpan and dead serious.

I felt sorry for her, but I loved her unwillingness to be phony.

Still Wrapped and Still Unbroken

Just like I loved the Lowe’s employee I encountered yesterday. He was working the hardware area and I needed some glass to replace broken panes, including the one smashed recently by my goofball son.

My candidate for Lowe’s Employee of the Year came pretty darn close to convincing me to not buy glass from Lowe’s. “You sure you want this stuff?” he asked.

Well, I needed glass and it was glass he was in charge of providing. Although I’ve used Plexiglas, I didn’t want to go plastic, primarily because the sheet sizes were such that I’d be paying for a lot of wasted material. I just wanted four panes of cheap glass. I didn’t expect such resistance.

“I gotta tell you,” said the anti-salesman. “This is the thinnest, most fragile glass I’ve ever seen. We break it all the time, just trying to cut it.” He held up a piece, edgewise, to show me the terribly thin width of the glass. The man was amazing.

I almost took his advice, remembering the anger I felt during the winter when I cracked a new piece of Lowe’s glass while inserting a glazing point. I’d blamed myself, figuring I pushed on the pointy little tab with too much vertical, and not enough horizontal, muscle. Now, however, I figured I could blame it on the glass.

The thing is, if you’re going to talk a customer out of buying the El Cheapo glass, you should at least have some El Primo, glass to upsell. Lowe’s Fella didn’t and I figured I’d find the same paper-thin panes if I headed to Home Depot.

So, as Ian Anderson might sing, “I left there in the morning, with their glass tucked underneath my arm.” I carried the tightly-wrapped panes with incredible care. In fact, as I lifted the shatter-prone package out of the shopping cart, I probably appeared as worried as that wonderfully despondent cheerleader I’ll never forget.

On the other hand, the Lowe’s man appeared quite happy. He’d managed to cut and package the chintzy stuff without incident. “Good luck,” he said as I walked away. I swear to God, he said that.