Interesting little moment

Saturday, I decided to go out and do some shopping. I decided to include a trip to the craft store because it was a hard week, and I also wanted a couple additional colors of floss for a project I'm planning.

I wound up in the aisle where they have embroidery floss. There were also two women there - older women, very conservatively dressed (dark skirts, long-sleeved blouses, and jackets over the blouses). I don't know if they belonged to a particular religious group or to a religious order - they both had black head coverings, kind of like a nun's, but not exactly. (I know they weren't Amish. We do have a few Amish in this area but these women were dressed differently). They were speaking quietly to one another in some other language - it sounded Germanic, but my German is not very good and anyway, I try not to eavesdrop on other people's conversations.

(It's possible they were of one of the Mennonite subgroups. I'm sure they were Christian; the head coverings were not like those Muslim women sometimes wear, and also, I think I remember one of the women had a cross pendant)

But it struck me as sort of an interesting thing - sort of a "we are really not that different, after all" moment - them in their dark plain clothing, me in jeans and an old t-shirt from a conference I attended several years ago, both of us looking at floss.

They didn't look at me but if they had I would have smiled gently. I would love to know what they were planning on making with the floss they were buying...