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September 2, 2004
People Who Need People
Makes you just wanna cry...
I certainly expected grocery shopping to be a nightmare, and after careful consideration I chose the Winn-Dixie store in which Will and I would do that shopping. And to my credit, the parking lot, although pretty full, was not a madhouse. The shelves, while entirely empty of bottled water and many specific canned items, were not devoid of quite a bit of non-perishable foodstuffs. Many of the canned vegetables we bought were even on sale, as if everyone else had the same list of items to buy.
We didn’t spend more than twenty minutes shopping before we made our way to the huge lines at the checkout. Every register was in use, and each of the regular lines were backed up more than three carts apiece. It wasn’t long before a row broke out in the line next to us, from a loud, boisterous, and dressed-like-a-street-whore Caribbean woman. Apparently, she had left her daughter to save her place in line and at some point people began to move ahead of the poor girl. I’m not certain what happened, but an older woman, also with a Caribbean accent, refused to let her in front of her.
The manager finally had to come talk to her, and they both finally found their place in line, but the loud woman could not let it go. She had to keep egging on the older woman, who had yielded her position, because she didn’t want anyone to think her a liar.
I finally had to shout at her that nobody cared if she was a liar or not because we were all in the same boat, hoping to survive the same storm. I’ve heard stories about the lines of people filling their tanks of gas, and how rude everyone wants to be, at each other, and at the service clerks.
The spirit of togetherness that unified our nation after 9/11, seems to have evaporated. A horrifying tragedy has been so manipulated and perverted to fund a war that benefits a few, and nobody can seem to agree with what being an American means.
This hurricane couldn’t have come at a more inopportune moment, a Republican Convention that pretty much erased the closing ceremonies of the Olympic Games from our consciousness. The president and his party have polarized Americans like never before, and many of us don’t know that the stranger on the street isn’t to blame. “I’m not voting Republican and nobody I know is voting for him, so it must be the man/woman I don’t know.”
Or it could just be that people can be real assholes in times of crisis.
Posted by Bastique at September 2, 2004 11:46 PM