A LIGHTING store a few miles away from us is permanently closing next month.

It has been in business for 72 years. It’s an independent, small business, not part of a chain, and sells all kinds of lamps, light fixtures and the accessories that go with them, including shades, harps, bulbs, sockets and that little thing at the top of a lamp that keeps it all together. Everything electricity has engendered in the way of illuminating human existence, it has sold.

During the last couple of months, I visited the store a few times. I was one of the vultures picking over its stock, all of which has been deeply discounted.

On one visit, I picked out a reading floor lamp as a Christmas gift. It was 50 percent off.

I asked the salesman — a stocky, black man with neatly-tied dreadlocks and bulging eyes — for the lamp with the dark finish. I recognized him from previous visits. After he had carried the box out from the stockroom, I asked — though I felt bad — if I could have the one with the silver finish instead.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said.

“I guess you’re used to people changing their mind,” I said, smiling apologetically.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, without skipping a beat.

And when he turned to go back to the storeroom with uncomplaining fortitude, I saw — as if in a vision — the throngs of  nerve-wracking, indecisive, neurotic, uninformed and sometimes grateful and pleasant customers he had served over his many years in this brilliant showroom of lights. He had mastered the ability to overcome irritation with courtesy. He was a retail warrior who had learned a thing or two about human nature.

I found out he has worked in the same store for 25 years. It was his job and it supported him. This seems strange and unconventional in this universe of conglomerates, with their meager wages and ever-tightening death grip on all forms of small enterprise, especially since the “pandemic” began. Funny, how this “virus” has targeted small businesses. It almost seems like it was a plan. First, America gave away its manufacturing. Then it gave away its retail. Politicians talk on and on about supporting small businesses, but they are total liars. Small businesses will never be top political donors. Small, independent stores — part of the backbone of political freedom — are going the way of horses and buggies, with the face mask helping this program along by depersonalizing retail encounters.

“What will you do?” I asked. He was kindly taking the box out to the car.

(Neither of us was wearing a mask, in or out of the store.)

“I will have to find another job.”

He said it without any obvious self-pity. But he was clearly disappointed by this turn of events and had no job possibilities yet. I imagined him in an Amazon warehouse stocking shelves. It is unlikely there will be any job that will use his very particular expertise of serving annoying people looking for lamps. Many lamps and fixtures, possibly most, are purchased online now or at big box stores, with their cheap Chinese imports. This particular business will offer sales online too, but no longer will you be able to stop by the storefront to get a lamp fixed or physically peruse the selections you will probably never buy.

Catalogues are deceptive. Have you noticed that? You can’t get a sense of materials or proportions.

I wonder what Thomas Edison would think if he visited a lamp store and saw the ingenious possibilities the light bulb has fostered. It’s just a whole different experience, shopping online is. You can’t ask a salesman dumb and annoying questions. You can’t walk back and forth, looking at a light fixture from many angles. You can’t hold a shade in your hands and feel the fabric or assess the color. You can’t get a lamp fixed when it breaks.

You can’t have your handwriting read by a salesman, free of charge.

On another recent visit to the store, I signed the credit card bill for a few lampshades discounted to $15.

The salesman — an older man who I believe is part of the Jewish family that owns the store — looked at my signature and said, “Oh my!” It was if he had received an electric shock, which has probably happened before to many people in the lighting business.

“You’re an individualist!” he exclaimed loudly. “I read handwriting, and I can see that you are a very courageous person!”

I blushed.

When I told my husband this later, he said the salesman, who was at least 70 years old, has probably used the same line on countless female customers. Whatever, I am sure that if he knew just how courageous I was, I would not be welcome in his store.

He kept saying it over and over as he walked with me to the car.

“You are a courageous person! You know how to stick up for yourself.”

“No, it’s not about me. It’s about the truth,” I said, smiling at this thoroughly endearing character.

For those few minutes, we were two people. Not robots. Not disembodied voices. Not just figures completing a commercial transaction. At least, I don’t think we were. This was about more than a sale. It was about, well, it was about …. individualists.

If I were rich, I would open a lamp store to employ these men. It would be a modest showroom of dazzling lights and personal encounters. It would be a showroom where anyone could have a quick handwriting analysis for free and anyone could change their mind at the spur of the moment. It would be place where courtesy would courageously overcome pettiness and irritation. It would accomplish nothing that would change the world. Its smallness would make it entirely insignificant. And when it closed its doors for good, its greedy and avaricious patrons would look back nostalgically on the insignificant moments spent there and feel as if something important, something really big, had died. There would be no funeral, only memories.

In other words, it would be just like this store closing right now.

I will probably never lay eyes on those two men again in the highly impersonal suburban area where I live (unless I am drawn with greed and avarice to the 80 percent discounts later this week.)

Many other stores have closed recently, even chain stores. The world is changing, they say.

But this is different.

I’m not sure what it was about my handwriting. I don’t know why I suddenly changed my mind.

But I know we were friends.

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