Now, sitting here this morning, pouring over these receipts again, before I get up the gumption to pay my bills, I'm asking myself why I did that to that cashier. How could I? What exactly did I have the intention of doing with these receipts anyway? What importance did they represent? Can't I just be nice???? I can't help but feel like there is this tiny little thread of relation weaving around through my life and our current events and maybe these receipts have ended up being the little ticket to my own personal understanding.
I had gone through the store that day with a calculator. I passed on the apples because my neighbor was kind enough to offer me his. I didn't need carrots because Brazen is having an amazing crop this year. I did need bananas and Ben's trail mix. He always acts like it is such a surprise when I remember to get him his lunch makings. Not because he is forgotten, but because he is understanding enough to know that we have tough choices to make and he doesn't want to be thought of first. He doesn't expect it. Isn't that funny? He doesn't expect his humble lunch makings. Trail mix ingredients from the bulk foods section of WinCo. And he's willing to go without. But I had a budget of $200.00 and that would leave us with $25.50 for miscellaneous. And I was feeling blessed that I could do this and make it happen. I even got Sam and Morgan some cocoa and Brazen some chocolate covered raisins for his after school jar. Camble had asked about getting floss and so I got one for every bathroom. I guess that's where I went over. By a whole $1.20. I should have just done the rounding up trick. And maybe I wouldn't have been so upset about that one dollar and 20 cents if I hadn't just witnessed the woman in front of me purchase 6 monster Drinks, Doritos, Cocoa Puffs, Tootsie Pops, Mars Snax Bars, Frozen Talapia, Lays Chips, Pepsi, Pace Picante Sauce, Extra Gum and Coffee Creamer. I was in such awe I stopped bagging my own groceries and just watched hers go down the little grocery bagging area. It was like they were doing a little dance before my eyes. I couldn't stop watching. Then, because I was so intrigued by her outstanding food choices, I was even more curious about her method of paying for such wonderful food items. And, yes, it was all paid for by an Oregon Trail card.
Something inside of me snapped. Literally disconnected. I didn't intend to be hostile, but I blurted out, "That's not food! None of that is actually food. How can she pay for that with an Oregon Trail card?" SHE was still standing beside me. I guess I had forgotten that she was actually a person. For some reason I must have decided the poor clerk was the gistapo of the whole welfare system. Or, apparently I was. Who knew? Because really, what I was saying was, "I don't want to pay for that! In fact, THE AMERCIAN PEOPLE . . . . " The cashier then assured me that it was, in fact, all considered food items. Then something even more curious happenned. When I regained my composure a little I noticed that the woman, who's purchase I was so offended by, wasn't even phased by my objections. She was just casually waiting with her cart. She had actually bagged her items. She was also in communication with the woman in line behind me to conspire to make certain purchased with her card because she only had so much of a balance and the woman behind me must've had more on her card. More Doritos, cherry pies, chocolate pies, tortilla chips, Folgers Coffee, 2 packs of 24 cans of Pepsi, Red Bull Energy Drinks, 2 packages of imittation crab, more gum, Franz White Bread, Lays Wavy Chips, etc. I began bagging my groceries so I wouldn't let myself be a voyer as she took out her card. I knew it was going to happen. I just pretendied it was behind closed doors and it was none of my business. This time. I was playing nice. But, I couldn't deny it was my business all the same. It made my head spin to look at our carts sitting there beside each other. I wanted to take a picture, but felt like I'd already taken things too far and didn't want to become one of "those" people, along with the person I had just become.
I have kept the reciepts. I guess I wanted to try to play the "No Way" game with myself and refer back to them when I started to question the realilty of it all. I went to my car with my head down, feeling ashamed for attacking the cashier and embarrassing the two women who I treated like criminals. I thought of that little baby that the woman was bouncing on her hip. Not a soothing bounce, but a gittered up, uncontrolled body jerking of a bounce. I reconsidered the contents of makings of all of those food items in their carts. I wanted to rescue the little girl and squeeze her and sit and let life happen in front of her while she sat still quietly, discovering and deciding how she wanted to step into it. I apologized to her with my tears and said I was sorry that I had just bought her Mama garbage to fuel her body and brain. That didn't represent my values or my beliefs, but nobody is really asking me what those are either.
I remember standing in the cheese lines when I was a little girl. I remember the indignity I shouldered because in my mother's desperation she chose an easy escape and assumed her appropriate attitude of victim and entitlement. I learned that the word "They" referred to everybody yet nobody. "They" were the people that owed her and we needed to be defensive to. Everybody owed her. Nobody wanted to, but she was entitled. She was deserving of everything. And that attitude made me embarrassed, for her sake. Standing in my red coat from Goodwill, on the streets of Salem, in the cold with my brothers and sisters. We waited to be handed our bricks of cheese. Free cheese that we deserved. We didn't even eat the cheese all of the time. But it was important that it was free and "They" said we could have it. Yet we were to be thankful for it. Even though it was somehow owed to us. For something. Owed to my mother. For having children, I guessed. Nobody talked about it. I just had to assume you got free cheese because you had children. And my mother had a lot of children. So she deserved a lot of cheese. I just had to decipher the looks and anticipate how much "They" decided we deserved. When my mother was sure she deserved everything. No matter what the rules where, or who "They" were, there were only real live people behind those tables, passing out boxed up cheese loafs and judgement on those Salem streets. I couldn't make sense of it. Who were the "They"?
Now I'm one of the "They".
I harrassed that cashier because judging those women somehow made that little girl inside of me hand out retribution to all of those who judged me. I wanted somehow to show that little baby being shaken and jerked around that there is a better way and surely I'd discovered it. I guess I thought I needed to save her before she even realized she needed to be saved. Somehow I believed my judgement would shine a light on her lost mother. I just gave her more of what she's grown so accustomed to its easy to just ignore. Ignoring my judgement probably made me feel like thrashing her with my icy stares and projected disgust wasn't going to make the revolutionary changes I needed it to make. All for her own benefit, I'm sure. I was convinced.
I think I may have been more effective if I could have let my relatively for her situation guide me to understanding and kindness. I didn't know how to educate that little baby or those two woman on healthy food choices in an instance so I used that valuable time to deliver harsh judgement instead, hoping that impact would inspire them to search out the options and alternatives. Just like those women handing out the cheese directed me.
I started carrying seeds in my bag. When I run out I go back to Down To Earth and I pick some more out, completely randomly, and stick them back in my bag. When I find myself in these situations, like the grocery store incident, I quietly pull out some seeds and give them away. Flowers. Pumpkins. Cilantro. Flowers. Kholrobi. Flowers. And that is what I'd like to be symbolic of who I am and what I believe instead.
