It was the fourth day of vacation, and I’d spent the past five minutes wandering a CVS six hours from home looking for a quick hunger fix. I was on my second trip down the potato chip aisle when the man stocking the Frito-Lays section called out. 

“Hey, she’s got a sticker for you!”

My response can only be described as “awkward human who’s busy looking for protein bars because she’s feeling a little woozy and has been caught off guard by a stranger offering her a sticker.” I think it sounded something like, “Huh, wha, uh, me?” 

“Yes, you!” came the reply. He was, indeed, talking to me, the hapless (and hungry) tourist.

Seeing yet more confusion registering on my face, he continued. 

The “she” he was referring to was a CVS employee who’d gone to grab a batch of branded stickers.

“Why me?” I asked. 

“Because you were nice!” came the answer.  

On my first trip down the aisle, I’d come across this same route sales rep and said pharmacy employee talking with one another. They’d left open space between them for customers to traverse the aisles, and I’d made my way through that open space. 

“You were the only one who said, ‘excuse me,’” he explained. 

My response this time was less confused but more boisterous than intended. “But that's what everyone should say!”

He nodded, his shoulders climbing towards his earlobes. His “yeah” was a bit tired. 

There it was. His whole story in one exhausted syllable.

On vacation, you get used to being the one who’s in the way, in the unfamiliar grocery store trying to find the seltzer aisle, on the street corner fumbling for your phone to pull up the map, in the pharmacy aisle looking for the protein bars. 

You don't expect to be the one who gets a sticker for it.