Yesterday on the way home from work I stopped in at a large supermarket to pick up a few things, including rock salt to deal with a coming ice storm.

Walking in the door, from a distance, a beautiful head of hair on a young woman at one of the many checkout lanes caught my eye.

After shopping, I saw that only one person was in her lane, so I got in line. As she's helping the person ahead of me, I checked out her waist-length, wavy hair, somewhat strawberry blondish, but with some highlights. It was all one length, and she kept playing with it. I wondered if she'd been to the salon recently. She was young - early 20s probably. Not glamorous, but a cute face and glasses. Her name tag said Megan, and she had been working in the store since 2019.

I don't normally offer compliments to women on their hair in public. I'm kind of shy that way, but my wife wasn't with me, and nobody else was in line to overhear me. I thought that if I don't say something now, I may never get the chance. I wasn't trying to pick her up or hook up, just brighten her day a bit.

When it was my turn, I said hello and gave her my tote bag to fill.

"If you don't mind a compliment," I said, "you've got beautiful hair."

Megan smiled, thanked me, looked down and kept scanning my yogurt and canned soup, and I kind of looked down, too, out of embarrassment. At least she didn't react badly.

I swiped my credit card to pay, then immediately realized I'd forgotten to ask her to add two bags of rock salt to my bill. (Instead of putting them in your cart, you just tell the cashier what you want, then pick them up from a pallet out front.)

"Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot. I need two bags of the rock salt," I said. Then I added: "I must have been distracted by your hair."

She got kind of flustered and couldn't find the lookup for the rock salt. Usually they have a list of the bags of rock salt and water softener salt so they know the codes when customers ask for them. But she couldn't find it. "Sorry, I'm new," she said, running her left hand through her thick hair nervously.

I couldn't remember the brand, so I offered to run outside and get a bag for her to scan, which I did. She smiled at me when I got back and finished checking me out.

I left the supermarket kind of exhilarated - I'd complimented a cute girl on her beautiful hair, and nothing bad happened. She didn't call the manager or accuse me of being a dirty old man, even though I'm probably old enough to be her grandfather.