This post was originally written August 5, 2017 and has languished in my draft folder since then.
The father bellowing at the little boy in the Walmart parking lot was a bad start.
“JOHNNY,” he roared, “GIT YER A$$ OVER HERE.”
The open tailgate made me think that the father had been putting his purchases into the car. The boy skulking back from the cart corral looked to be about 8 or 9 years old. He was scowling. I would scowl, too, if someone spoke to me like that.
Walmart. I felt a snobbish “ugh” rising inside me.
Inside, the store was a disorderly mess.
“You can always tell when the students start coming back,” commented a woman looking at the same merchandise as me. “They trash the place.”
“It is a mess in here,” I agreed.
“I shop here every week,” she said. “Today is the worst I’ve seen it.”
I gathered my items and found the shortest line to check out.
The shortest line was not short. When the elderly couple ahead of me finally got up to the register and the cashier was nearly finished scanning, their package of chicken needed a price-check.
“I’m sorry,” the man said, turning to me. I could barely see his eyes under the brim of Carhartt cap.
“No worries,” I said. “I’m not in a hurry.”
“Me and my wife got a carful of groceries already,” he said, nodding toward a hunched-over woman with blue-gray hair. “Frozen stuff prolly meltin’ in the car… but she forgot a few things so we come back in.”
A few things meant a cartful.
“I hope you aren’t far from home,” I said.
“Blenheim,” he said.
I knew that was about an hour away. In the middle of nowhere. Near Breakabeen.
“I’m sorry,” I told him.
The Walmart supervisor came to check on the chicken. She called on the radio to the meat department. “Anyone there gimme a price on some chicken?” she asked. I couldn’t hear the response because of her earpiece, but I didn’t need to — she announced it. “I gotta walk this over to the chicken department to get a price,” and off she walked.
I turned to the man behind me. “I’m sorry,” I said, even though I knew I had nothing to be sorry for.
“No problem,” he said. “I just moved here from Long Island. You should see the lines in their stores.”
So we waited.
“You could move over to a different line,” said the Carhartt man.
I looked at the line next to ours. It was moving faster, but I’m not one to jump ship. A burly man helped unload an elderly woman’s cart on the belt, but when he left with his bag, I realized they weren’t together. It was just a nice move.
The chicken department was on the far side of the store. I kept watching that direction to see if I saw the supervisor heading back.
The blue-haired wife mouthed “I’m sorry” to me. I smiled at her.
I made eye contact again with the man behind me. “I was in Europe this summer,” I told him. “Time doesn’t seem to matter as much there.”
“I know,” he said. “We could learn a lesson or two from them.”
The chicken was still MIA.
In the line next to me, a man holding a plant — his only purchase — was let ahead of a customer with a full cart. “Thank you SO much,” he said, enthusiastically. The woman who had let him pass just smiled.
I smiled, too.
There were nice people all around me.
In Walmart.
Finally chicken lady returned.
I told Long Island man, “Here she comes!”
“Hooray!” he said.
I felt like we should clap or something.
By the time I got to the parking lot, I had nearly forgot the unpleasant father-son interaction because I had seen and talked to so many nice people in the store that day.
I could guess why I never posted this — too wordy. It’s a problem I have.
But the message to look for the nice people? Yes, I needed that today.
Be not conformed to the impatience and nastiness of the world, but be transformed by the goodness that’s right in front of you if you look for it. (a bastardization of Romans 12:2, but nonetheless true.)
