I love Geneva’s Salvation Army store. The clothes I buy there have prompted some of the best compliments my sartorial splendor ever earned.

It’s stop and shop No. 1 when my daughter visits from the East. On first entering, we check the color tags that offer 50% off and 25% off, commit the colors to memory and then go our separate ways, wandering up and down aisles with the passion of a Jack Torrance limping through a snow-laden maze.

After half an hour of looking for myself, my shopping cart half loaded with checked shirts, a broad-brimmed hat, a string of ties (when still teaching and ties were required nooses) and, if lucky, an Imelda Marcos jackpot of size 13-14 walking, working and casual footwear, I sit on one of the comfy couches for sale and read a book while my daughter continues her hunt.

However, strange things can happen. Or, if not strange, then unpredictable ...

Driving home after sweating it out at the gym for a good 10 or 15 minutes, I stopped at the Jewel-Osco on Randall Road to grab a few things and use the bathroom, but for the second time that week the bathroom was barricaded better than what the deplorables built in “Les Miserables.”

Dispirited and anxious, I hustled across Route 38 to the Salvation Army store. Once inside, although tempted to dart down the XXL aisles for pre-worn green and red Christmas items such as plaid pants or crimson and/or emerald sweaters, I swerved left toward the restrooms.

And abruptly halted.

A frail, white-haired, bespectacled, probable grandma was s-l-o-w-l-y pushing her cart down the short hallway leading to relief. Staying behind her until she disappeared into the nearer bathroom, I leaped forward and turned the second restroom’s handle.

Locked.

Dejected, I stationed myself at the hallway entrance and looked over the DVDs, picking up “Sideways,” shocked to have recently discovered my daughter, in her 30s, had not seen it.

Suddenly, a large man wearing all black strode past me.

“They’re both being used,” I called.

He jovially excused himself for being presumptuous and waited by the bookshelves behind me.

A few minutes later, examining a gift set of “Die Hard,” I caught peripherally a thin, white-haired man in a sports jacket pass me. I called again, “Both restrooms are in use.”

Bypassing Grandma’s cart, he called back, “I work here.” Following the upstart, I watched him knock, try the second restroom’s door handle, then take from his pocket a ring of jangling keys. “I heard any key works.”

Trying one key after another until one fit, he opened the door and instead of letting me, first in line, enter, he walked in and closed the door.

I thought about hammering on the door, but in a store with a Christian philosophy, I played nice and retreated to my DVD shelf.

Later, in the shirt aisle, I found a stain-free, soft-as-milkweed-seed, lake blue Ralph Lauren. Setting aside a sweater I’d found, I was taking off my jacket when there was Grandma, her cart strategically placed between me and Ralph Lauren. Before I could reach for the shirt, she lifted it to admire.

“Hey, that’s mine! I found it first!” That’s what I was thinking.

But again, something urged me to play nice. I put my jacket back on and went to check out. It was early in the new year. This could be my resolution, to do the right thing, the empathic thing, the kind thing, the giving thing.

But past resolutions to lose weight never lasted past January, either.

• Rick Holinger taught English and creative writing at Marmion Academy for 40 years. His writing has appeared in Chicago Quarterly Review, Chautauqua, The Southern Review and elsewhere. His poetry, “North of Crivitz,” and essays, “Kangaroo Rabbits and Galvanized Fences,” are available at local bookstores, Amazon or richardholinger.net. Contact him at editorial@kcchronicle.com.