Sputterpub's Blog

I went on to the grocery store, feeling a little exposed. I’d been unable to make a $6 purchase without having my selections announced and analyzed. I’d been unable to take the $6 purchase into another establishment without having myself and the items again noticed, coming and going. I figured I could make the last stop quick – a few cherries and apricots and a bottle or two of Perrier – a whisk through the express line before noon on a Sunday. But even that was not to be.

The store was relatively crowded. Both express lines were open and jammed. Another six regular registers were open too, and all had multiple customers.

I bagged a pound of cherries. I picked four firm apricots and one ripe avocado, and I left the produce section for the adjacent aisle, where they stock the beverages. In rounding the corner between those areas, I started to pass by a church-clad black woman. She was wearing a pale blue crocheted dress, and long straightened hyper-styled hair. She looked to be in her 30s. There was plenty of room. Neither of us is fat and neither had to break stride or slow pace. But she decided to speak. “Excuse you,” she said.

“Pardon me?” I countered.

“I said, ‘excuse you.’ That’s what you’re supposed to say when you pass someone like that.”

I made a quick decision not to engage in this dialogue. “I’m sorry,” I said.

“Oh, don’t be,” the woman replied. “No need to be sorry. ‘Excuse me’ is just the thing to say in these circumstances.” And she waltzed away, slowly, in the other direction.

I had been considering the addition of a few items to my basket. The express lane permits 12, and I could carry more than I had collected. But that was the last straw. The third strike. I was getting a clear message that I was not fit for the world I was finding today.

I joined an express lane line. I said the required words to the cashier, and I paid for my groceries (the tab was $16.99, and with the change I’d gotten at Long’s I had $16.84 in my pocket; I used a credit card). I managed to get out of there and I headed for home and my room.

What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with them? Why can’t we see the same?

I think the Long’s cashier was uncouth. She shouldn’t have commented on my purchases.

I think the bookstore woman was unnecessarily bureaucratic. Policy my ass. There’s a big difference between a large opaque backpack and a plastic bag which advertises both the store and its contents.

I don’t think I was rude in the grocery store, but I got a lecture. How’s this?

I think I’ll say how. I must have gone out of here with a chip on my shoulder and then broadcast it. The Long’s clerk probably sensed something and tried to converse and cheer me up. The book bitch probably sensed nothing, but between not finding the book and having a small fit getting my bag back, I left that store with a hard-on that then got read by blue-dress. I think she interpreted attitude as behavior. I passed her in a whirl of negativity, and her complaint (I think) was not about my proximity. I doubt she knew what she was objecting to, but I think it’s probable she just came from an experience of community and found my mood jarring.

Short-term hindsight is perfectly sarcastic. But it’s good that I didn’t say to her, “I’m sorry that my behavior bothers you,” and then when she replied (as she would have) with the “Oh no, don’t be sorry,” I could have sliced back with, “Well, perhaps you should be sorry that your behavior bothers me. Because, lady, you’re not my mother, and you’re confused about your role if you think it’s to teach me manners.”

It’s good I didn’t say that, because it wouldn’t have made me feel better, and I see now it would have missed the point.

She was off base but not baseless.

(Longs is now CVS. The bookstore (Black Oak) is no more. I wouldn’t buy cookies that contain partially hydrogenated vegetable oil unless commanded to at gunpoint. And either my attitude has improved or I’ve gotten better at preventive solitude.)

That wasn’t the end of my irks. It was hardly even annoying. A better person than I (or a better mood) would have made a light joke, if anything, out of the experience.

Today is Sunday. I left the house an hour ago to run a few easy errands. I intended to visit Long’s for sunflower seeds. I know that a drugstore is an odd place to go for sunflower seeds, but the grocery store doesn’t seem to have them lately. I also wanted to drop by the used bookstore on the same block, to pick up a copy of Gone to Soldiers by Marge Piercy, for my mother. It’s about growing up during WWII, as she did, and I think she’ll enjoy it. My final planned stop was at the seedless grocery store, for some fruit and vegetables. Naively I figured I could run these errands without undue notice from my fellows.

Long’s had lots of sunflower seeds. I like the 5.75 oz bag, and I pulled three of those off the metal rod. I also selected a package of eight chocolate chunk pecan cookies. I proceeded to the register with my four items, where I got to interact with the heavy-set young woman behind the counter. She looked mixed-race, with dark golden plump skin, and she had long hair, apparently straightened, pulled in flat curving bangs across her domed brow and down the right side of her rounded face. She acted manically friendly, and decided to comment on my purchases. “These look good,” she said as she dropped the package of cookies into the plastic bag that was suspended by a frame on her side of the scanner. “And yes,” she continued as she pulled the red bags of sunflower seeds over the glass reader, “I always like to balance the salt snacks with the sweets, too.” She looked up at me then with a conspiratorial grin, and I thought “Huh? What’s with this girl? Why does she think it’s okay to make comments about my purchases? And why does she assume it’s all for me and for today?” I mean, it probably is all for me, but it isn’t all for now, and it’s not all I have around.

My total came to $6.16. I wasn’t carrying any coins. It’s another small thing, but it would have been lovely not to have received the 4 pennies back. I guess Long’s doesn’t have a good-cents policy.

I was more grumpy when I left Long’s than when I entered. I also had heavier pockets.

Next stop: the bookstore. Not only did they not have the book I wanted, but the woman at the entrance made me surrender my Long’s bag.

This woman was not a kid. She was at least 40. And not only am I not likely to be a shoplifter, but the Long’s bag is translucent white plastic, and it’s very obvious what’s inside. “Do I really have to?” was my first response to her “Excuse me: please check your bag.”

“It’s just food,” I added as I showed it to her, but she informed me that this was store policy; to be consistent they require that every bag be checked. (Bullshit. I’ve shopped there for ten years and never surrendered a bag.)

I handed over my poor sunflower seeds and cookies, and accepted the playing-card piece she gave me as a receipt.

It took about 90 seconds to determine that Gone to Soldiers was neither on the Literature nor Pocket Book Fiction shelves.

I spent twice that long getting my bag back, because it was behind the register and there were two customers waiting to pay. The woman who had insisted on taking custody of my food acted deaf and blind not six feet away, but (clearly) her job description includes the policing task of taking bags but not the relatively pleasant job of giving them back. I had to get a little forceful and announce to the cashier that I was stepping behind the counter to retrieve my bag. I had to observe her anxiety as I almost left the place without removing the clothespin and matching playing-card piece.

Okay…

Sometimes the collection of evidence becomes impossible to ignore. Like when I think I’m doing fine and then I catch my heel on a street grating, almost fall and drop my stuff, encounter a silly obstacle or a rude driver, and the next thing I know, I’m sobbing at some retail counter, receiving the awkward consolation of a minimum-wage stranger. It’s as good as an injury for making me stop and notice myself.

It doesn’t happen often, but something like it just occurred. I got a clear message that it was time for me to go to my room.

I guess the first signs of annoyance came yesterday, over the Internet. For some reason I got tired of deleting all the unwanted e-mail marketing messages, and I started attempting to remove myself from each mailing list.

I was surprised when most of the “remove” routines acted like they were working. There were a few that required me to send a remove reply by e-mail, and one of those was undeliverable, according to DAEMON, or whatever they call the mailer who governs my traffic. But most of them shot me over to some Internet “remove service,” which appeared sincere and only asked for my patience. I agreed to postpone my irritation for the 72 hours the service said it needed.

The only sender that fried my cookies (or perhaps refused to fry their cookie) was WallStJournal.com. I once had an online subscription. I never paid for it; my daughter received it as some sort of reward for donating to public TV, and she gave it to me. It was supposed to be a free year, but it wasn’t. I didn’t use it often, but I noticed that theWallStJournal.com’s idea of a year was the time from when I signed on (mid-May) to December 30. I didn’t even get December 31. I know because that was one of the very few days I tried to interact with the interactive online service. I sought closing market prices. But on December 31 the only thing I was allowed to do was either click a button that would let me pay for another year, or exit. I exited.

WallStJournal.com had been sending me little headline e-mails ever since I first signed on in May, and kept sending them to me after I declined to resubscribe. The e-mails were useless to me, because if I tried to visit the site to which they were linked, I was informed that the page was for paying subscribers only. And I get headlines I can follow up, from the New York Times and elsewhere, all free and not bothersome.

So I got to viewing the headline e-mails from WallStJournal.com as spam. They arrive uninvited, and they clutter my inbox with text I don’t want. Yesterday, when I received yet another, I attempted to have myself removed.

The headline was about the conviction of Arthur Andersen Company for obstruction of justice (file shredding). No big deal. Not big news.

At the bottom was the following message:

TO REMOVE YOURSELF from this list, see: http://online.wsj.com/user-cgi-bin/searchUser.pl?action=emailalert

So I clicked/visited. Guess what? The page is for subscribers only! My choices were to give a credit card number for their charge, or exit. I exited.

I could have called customer service and complained. But I didn’t want to complain. I was done interacting. I just wanted out, quietly and without undue notice. Pheh.