Things I should not see.

Sadly, this is the first installment of a new litany of things I should not have seen during my day.

Things I should not see:

A woman in a long fur coat in the checkout line at the grocery store complaining to the checker that the price of the pasta in her grocery load has gone up $.13 per packet. Also in her grocery load: frozen lobster, about a 1LB chunk of Parmesan, 6 bottles of wine. She’s pushing a shining new ‘SUV’ stroller.

Not only is she pointing out with alacrity that the pasta price has ‘gotten out of control’, she’s doing so to a shrinking teenager who probably (if he’s lucky) makes about $8 an hour, berating him as if he’s personally twisted a blade between her ribs. Her child, probably about 2 years old, wants to join in– squawking and shrieking with Momma at this checker.

Yet she doesn’t blink when that lobster rings up at $16.99 per LB, or at any of the bottles of wine that ring over $19.99. All of this at 8 AM in an annoyingly yuppified neighborhood where a cow in her fur coat isn’t alone in acting as if this kind of thing is justified.

Seeing that I survive partially on pasta, the $.13 rise is noted. Luckily that’s not enough to make me re-budget, but it’s noted. Then she invokes the name of ‘what’s right’ in front of me and the checker is biting his tongue. Trying not to say anything. Trying to hold it in.

I have been in his place before, and will be again. I don’t want to be there– nobody does, but it’s part of the way this all works. I will, however, never be in the place where I can buy lobster, parm, and a half case of wine all in one go. I begin to pout inwardly: I want some damn lobster! And a nice Alsatian wine as well!

For some reason, I get a little worked up. Stress is flying in all directions– teeth grinding, sour mouths pursing over indignation, then the kid is shrieking at top volume like some long-extinct flying reptile coming in for the kill.  My brain stills, lolling over one thought: I don’t actually want any of this. I want out of all of this.

I don’t want to be yelled when I am just doing what I have to do to make a living.

I don’t want to think that I am better or worse than anyone around me just because of my percieved level of comfort.

And for the love of all the Parmesan in the world, I never ever want to be in a space where I put on my mink and go around verbally bashing working people until my child is trained to be the same kind of monster that I am.

So that’s what I should not have seen. And what I do not want.

~ by weltschmerz on January 27, 2009.