I recently found myself in the bakery section of a local grocery store - the one with the obnoxiously sentimental commercials about sentient salt and pepper shakers - searching for the perfect sandwich roll. I found what I hoped would be the one behind the bake case, but the two ladies behind the counter were highly engrossed in their cleaning, so engrossed that my whistling, growing louder by the second, proved not able to alert them. Not long before I thought to try something else, say a clearing of the throat or, did I dare, actually speaking, one of the ladies accidentally knocked over a box full of pastry bag tips all over the large metal table where all the baking magic happens. The lady not responsible for the incident was obviously nowhere near as amused as the guilty party, but nevertheless felt compelled to go over and help clean up the mess. Now whatever impatience I might have mustered had changed to voyeuristic amusement as I watched the ladies haphazardly toss the tips into drawers that were once meticulously organized. Finally, with a roll of the eyes, the less clumsy lady turned around and jumped when she noticed I was there. I gave her a half-roll as a way of acknowledging her predicament; she rolled her eyes back towards her colleague, who was still recovering from her laughing fit. As I pointed out which rolls I wanted, a very familiar crashing sound shot out from a very familiar place, along with a very familiar laugh. My helper's eyes rolled right out of her head onto the table once again decorated with the tips. The buns went into a bag very quickly, the bag shot out over the counter, and with a jovial "good luck" from me, the long-suffering employee shuffled back towards the table.
The limits of the human mind are such that as far as I am concerned, those two ladies are still cleaning that table right now, and until I go back to that bakery section of that grocery store, they will still be cleaning. My challenge to myself is to give the strangers I meet on a day to day basis more of a life than what slice I manage to witness. My imagination may prove to be very wrong, but it sure beats a life of cleaning up after yourself and others. We'll see about those rolls later.
Singing in the city's like singing on the prairie
New York City's like a cemetary
- The Moldy Peaches, "NYC's Like a Graveyard"
Posted by Joel at 8/28/2005 01:14:00 AM
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