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"When I first saw them they were standing in front of the cantaloupe display. Her arms were around his waist and he was holding her face in his hands and giving her quick little kisses. Sure, right there in the supermarket, in the produce department, with people pushing carts past them while they hugged and smooched and patted and grinned. Maybe you've seen this sort of thing -- two people so taken with one another they can't get enough of loving in private, so they do it in public as well. I don't remember seeing this in a grocery store, though. You see it in parks, and at the beach, and sometimes even at bus stops. But in parks and beaches and bus stops a couple of lovers don't really have much else to do, so a little public lovey-dovey that way doesn't seem so extraordinary. But in the supermarket you'd think they could let loose of one another long enough to buy groceries. I assume that's why they were there. I doubt they were sitting at home and one said, \"Hey, let's go to the supermarket and hug and kiss among the vegetables.\" These were not high school kids. I'd guess they were around 30, and fairly close to standard-looking people. Meaning a little on the homely side, like most Americans. If you saw them walking on the street and behaving themselves, you wouldn't notice anything attractive about either of them. But it was pretty obvious they looked and felt totally beautiful to each other there in the store. Next came the spuds They did finally buy a cantaloupe, and moved on to potatoes. Suddenly she separated from him, whispered something I couldn't hear, kissed him goodbye and hurried away. I thought she was leaving the store but she took about a dozen steps, grabbed a head of iceberg lettuce and was back in 30 seconds. They stood arm in arm, picking out potatoes. Understand we were in a crowded store. I noticed several of the other customers showing an interest in this scene, but those lovers seemed not to know that anybody else was on the planet. Along with a white-haired gent wearing a baseball cap, I was squeezing avocados when the lovers were across the aisle in front of green beans and she was patting him on the rump. The white-haired gent looked at me and grinned and said, \"Man, they ought to go home.\" I went on to the seafood case because there was a special on Dover sole, which is one of my favorite fishes if it's really fresh. And I thought of my father and wished he could have seen those supermarket lovers. Because he'd have had a little talk to deliver on the fact that they were not attractive people and yet they were so attracted to one another they couldn't keep separated. (I find myself thinking often of my father lately because I just had a birthday and I'm now older than he was when he died. That sort of thing makes a person thoughtful.) Eyes of the beholder When I was a shirttail kid we had some neighbors who could have set records for homeliness if they'd ever entered such a contest. I mean on an ugly scale of 10, these people were solid nines, and maybe nines and a half. One time I said at the supper table that I didn't see how those neighbors could stand to look at one another all the time, and my father shut me up. Then he talked about how love creates beauty, how that neighbor husband saw his wife as beautiful because he loved her and she thought her husband was handsome for the same reason. He said it was a miracle, one of the greatest of them all. He'd say, look at animals. A male buzzard thinks a female buzzard is lovely, and a dirty sow pig is pretty to a boar, and that was his message. It was simplistic but impressive to me at the time. The other afternoon I saw the supermarket lovers twice again. Once near the center of the store where they were necking in soups, sauces and spices. Then again in the check-out line where they were still at it. All the customers were grinning at them but they didn't notice. You can write to Leon Hale at P.O. Box 4260, Houston 77210, e-mail him at leon.hale@chron.com or visit his Web site at www.leonhale.com."
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