The Bread Shelf Boy

 

I began dating the woman would become my wife, L, in 1987. I was a Junior in high school. She was a Senior.

After she left my house on the night that she first met my parents, my mom said, “She looks just the same.”

As you can imagine, I was a bit stunned by this comment. “What do you mean?” I asked.

“She used to come into the bakery all the time.”

You see, way back in the mid 1970’s, my mom worked at a place called Jacob’s Bakery at 3073 Madison Rd in Oakley.  In the summer and on weekends, my mom would often take me to work with her.  I’d lay in my sleeping bag and watch a little black and white TV and run around playing on the common area floor.  I had a particular affinity for laying on and taking naps on the bread shelf.

The next day, at school, I told L that my mom recognized her as a little girl who would stop in the bakery every so often.

L said yes, she’d stop at the bakery for a donut as she walked home from church on Sundays.

I told here all about how I’d be there with my sleeping bag and TV, and how I liked sleeping on the bread shelf.

L gasped. “You’re the Bread Shelf Boy?”

I laughed. “The what?”

She told me that she would see me when she stopped in the bakery and how she told her mom about the little boy who was there that would sometimes sleep on the bread shelf.

It’s almost like we were meant to be together.