May 9, 2009

• Life in the Breakdown Lane

  After doing my shopping from the supermarkets’ motorized scooters for a year or two, I still have no idea what to expect from other people in the stores.  I can make some generalizations.  In general, fewer people acknowledge my existence when I’m in the crip cart.  Most tend to avoid eye contact — and this is a culture where eye contact, smiles, nods and words of greeting between strangers are not uncommon.  In the crip cart, sometimes acquaintances don’t look closely enough at me to realize they know me.

  Then there is the subset of people who pay too much attention, excessively defer to me (maybe they’re just standing back out of the way because they fear I’ll run over them), or offer me unneeded help.  I’m usually more comfortable with the ones who pointedly don’t notice the cripple in their midst.  They give me the opportunity to pretend I’m a ninja.

  Today in Wasilla, at my first shopping stop the batteries were dead in all the scooters, so I used the grocery cart as a walker, as I’d done for years before I gave in and started riding a scooter.  It was a trip being up there with the real people for a change.  It was fatiguing, though, and I was pleased to ask at the counter for the key and ride the scooter at Treasure Loft, a big thrift store.  I was exhausted and feeling gimpy by then (started the day with a hitch in my git-along that only worsened throughout the day), so when I was at the checkout counter I asked, “Would it be okay if I park the scooter in its corner and just toss the key (it is on a curly flex cord) back to you?”  The woman chuckled and offered to carry my bags over to the scooter’s parking spot and take the key from me there.

  My next — and final — shopping stop was a big box store, and I couldn’t have made it through that one without the scooter.  In one aisle, an employee had a rack of potato chips out in the middle of the aisle so she could transfer bags of chips from the back to the front.  It didn’t bother me to wait.  I was sitting comfortably, and had a display of bagged candy beside me for entertainment.  I had plucked some hot tamale cinnamon candies from the rack, wondering if I could eat them without getting irresistible cravings for more, when the young woman noticed what I had in my hand and asked me if I liked hot tamales.  I assented, and she said her husband loves them.  I said I liked the extra-hot ones even better, but hadn’t seen any for quite a while.  That perked her right up.  She explained that there had recently been a mis-pick at the wholesaler and the store had received a shipment of Fire Hot Tamales they hadn’t ordered, and the cartons of candy had gone directly onto the closeout shelf at a big discount.

  She was headed in that direction to return to the stock room, and offered to show me where they were.  If I’d been on foot, I would have declined just because of the effort, pain, and fatigue involved, but in the scooter — no problem.  As we crossed the store, with her shortening her stride so I could keep up, we talked about the differing ways in which normally-abled people relate to crips (my word, not hers).  She said something about knowing it was hard to get around on the scooters, and I said, “Actually, with practice it is easy, and fun.”  It was kinda fun, having a conversation on my way to Fire Hot Tamale candy, 48 packages of it, for about the same price I’d have had to pay for 20 packages at retail.  Now, if one package gives me irresistable cravings for more, I can indulge myself until the lining of my mouth dissolves from the fiery chemicals.

  Further on, I had the most unpleasant interlude of the day.  A young couple were shopping along ahead of me, with three boys aged about 7 to 12.  The lovely young woman was being bossy and verbally abusive to all four males, and they were taking it docilely as if it were perfectly okay.  I was the innocent occasion for her calling her husband stupid and telling him to “hurry up and get out of the fucking way,” of me in my crip cart, as I was quietly and contentedly sitting there waiting for him to find what she wanted him to pick off the shelf for her.  I said there was no problem, and he glanced at me in surprise as if the furniture had spoken.  A bit further on, I stopped behind them again as she was heatedly saying to her man, “No, not that one you idiot, the other,” and he was looking baffled as the 3 boys wandered back and forth across the aisle.

  She exploded at the boys, and started physically trying to herd them into a smaller gaggle, pulling at their clothes, shoving from behind, and berating them for being “in the way.”  She never said in the way of what, but I must assume she saw me, or at least somehow perceived my presence, even though she never obviously glanced my way, and reacted not at all when I spoke up and said, “It’s all right, I could have waited,” though all 4 of the males gave me startled eyes and then gave her guarded glances.  If Mama’s unhappy, nobody’s happy.  I would have loved to stop and talk to her a while about low blood sugar and its effects on personality, and the effects of verbal abuse on the developing personalities of children, but I didn’t think she could have tolerated the shock of being addressed by a non-entity.  She would have just taken it out on the guys later, anyway.

  There were delays in my getting through checkout because I had to ask for employee assistance in getting some heavy packages of cat food and kitty litter.  The checker relayed my order to a young man who misunderstood and brought three white buckets full of kitty litter and three plain, empty white plastic buckets, instead of the white buckets of kitty litter and purple bags of cat food she’d told him to bring.  It was a humorous incident, and the man waiting behind me made light of the wait with joking references to some of the contents of my shopping cart.

  The rest of the trip was fairly uneventful.  Before I got home, Greyfox had called and told Doug that he had forgotten to give me the 3 dozen eggs he had bought for me on sale earlier in the week.  I had used up almost all my eggs, boiling a dozen for him.  His cooking facilities consist of a microwave oven.  He likes having hard boiled eggs to pack with his lunches when he’s out on the stand, and boiling eggs in a microwave is not feasible.  We were to trade the dozen boiled eggs for 3 dozen fresh eggs, and now he’s got all the eggs and no way to cook them.

  I’m rambling and babbling here, the old tired-and-wired thing.  My next move is to bed with a book so I can unwind.  Later, all.  There’s a whole ‘nother story to tell about Greyfox’s and my breakfast conversation this morning.

  

  • 2:27 am
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