My favorite Store greeter told me she wanted to smoke grass before turning 60.

Why not study art, writing or some other esoteric topic? I asked.

No, she said, “I have never smoked marijuana before.”

This wonderful woman has travelled extensively, living in her home town of Munich, Germany, then travelling in artistic circles in parts of Italy and other European lands. She vacations several months during the year in Miami, and seems to want for nothing financially.

“People can’t understand why I like this job,” she spoke about her role as one who greets consumers visiting the IKEA store just outside of Conshohocken, PA . She said she  never liked sales or working “inside.” She appears to gain an immense sense of “self-worth” in providing service to people entering the store, going out of her way to give directions, smile, and to make people truly feel welcomed. She is a joy to see, one who brightens the room by simply being her sincerely caring and comforting self. She is extremely good at what she does, and she truly likes what she does.

But smoking grass?

“Several of my girlfriends smoke it,” she said. I believe she’ll try it more out of curiosity than from anything else. And I was unsure about how I felt someone experimenting with something that most of us have tried and moved on from many years ago. I suggested she study dance, which I found out she had studied at an early age in Germany. Her eyes brightened, and her smile enlarged and she looked at me as if I had touched on something she already knew but had remained buried waiting for the right moment, the right phrase, the right key word to set into motion.

“I could learn the Tango,” she said and actually clapped her hands in front of face bowing her blonde head toward an inner inspiration. “I could go to Argentina and learn the Tango,”  she added.

I felt I had reached something in her, something that could be longer lasting and more nourishing than getting a recreational drug induced “high.”Perhaps I have helped to put off the pot luck adventure (misadventure) for a while. I won’t see her again for some 30 days. She’s off to Miami for another vacation. I hope to hear about her South American plans when she returns.

Sans any Acapulco Gold or Panama Red.