07.07.06
Bag Lady Blues
by Dee Andrews
It happened a couple of afternoons ago. And it must have been (okay - I must have been) quite a spectacle, I have to admit. But I’ll get to that in a minute.
My hero had sprinted out before me with his umbrella, because I saw him while I stood there in the covered doorway waiting for the rain to let up a bit, but I thought he was long gone already. I would have been if I had been him. The only thing I can figure is that deep pity must have overtaken him when he happened to glance back from the dry safety of his car and saw me. Or else his sense of the absurd.
Me? I was slowly sloshing and stumping my way to my car out in the blasted middle of the parking lot (the handicapped spaces were all filled when I got there with vehicles bearing no kind of handicapped plates or tags whatsoever, but that’s another story), in the middle of the biggest summer monsoon thunder storm so far this year in downtown Slidell, Louisiana with a two-level grocery cart (the latest thing, but I hate them) overflowing with about 75 (literally) plastic bags full of groceries and another plastic grocery bag upside down over my head to try to keep the rain, drops the size of golf balls, off.
Did I mention that the bag boy had unbeknownst to me perched the bag containing the gallon of milk on top of the rest of the bags at a precarious angle? Well, he did and halfway to the car it flew off the lower level of the grocery cart and busted wide open in the middle of that parking row, milk flowing away with the riverlets of rain.
When I’d gone in the store it was overcast, but didn’t look particularly rainy so I didn’t take an umbrella in with me. And I was in there for a very long time - like hour and a half - because I was slogging my way around the store very slowly with the knee high cast still slowing me down. Plus, we were out of groceries big time because I’ve been so confined of late. Seven months to the day worth "of late."
I had just seen the doctor and after we both (I’ve become quite expert at reading x-rays, if any of you need my services cheap) carefully surveyed my latest x-ray, he gave me my freedom. I graduated. I was set free from the burdensome knee high boot/cast to a pair of good Nike walking shoes for the foreseeable future. (He says rest of my life, maybe, but hey - beats a cast.)
Very limited walking, he said, and very slowly, with lots of resting in between, but still. What a wonderful lift that was. But, of course, I didn’t have a left shoe with me and hadn’t even had one on that foot for seven long months, so had to endure the cast a few hours longer (it turned out) until I could get home.
So, that is why I was grocery shopping for hours on end with no umbrella, in the "cats and dogs" downpour, thunder, lightening, God’s whole waterworks, in lovely Slidell, Louisiana at 4 p.m. Wednesday afternoon last. And that was why I grabbed a plastic grocery bag to pull down over my head while I slogged to my car out in the far reaches of the parking lot (did I mention that?) to try to get my 75 bags of groceries minus one (the gallon of milk) stowed before I started home.
The bag over my head wasn’t working too well, either to keep rain off my head and face or off my glasses so I could see, so that upset me, to say the least. Plus the spilt milk. See - not only had the bag boy inconsiderately perched the milk on top of everything else along the low side of the grocery cart, he had refused to help me take my $200 worth of groceries, mind you (I told you it had been a long while), out to the car or to put them in the trunk (a service they usually provide) because he said, he wouldn’t go out in the rain. He might get wet. (Better me to, I suppose, the "handicapped" lady with no umbrella in the knee high cast who can’t move very fast who’s got to go out there anyway.)
And there were lots of vehicles insisting on having their way rather than waiting for me to cross in front of them or to pass by, so I was really getting drenched and was aggravated about that, as well. I wanted desperately to get the rest of the groceries dumped in the trunk as fast as I could, which wasn’t going to be fast, believe me, because first I had to unlock the car doors, grab an unbrella, open it up while I dumped my drenched purse inside, open the trunk and then - with one arm - try to get all the bags in. I wanted to go home.
I had asked the bag boy to please put all of the perishable items in separate bags for me so I could segregate them in the trunk and only worry about getting them in the apartment once I got back home and leave the rest for Tom, since my walking is still very limited. But, I don’t know if he did that or not because by the time I got to the car it didn’t really matter any more.
Just then - thank God - and I profusely did - was when my hero showed up.
There I was dripping wet, just getting to the back of the car with my grocery bag still over my head, my cart full of loot and trying to get the trunk open when his smiling face under his umbrella appeared as if out of nowhere. He said, "I saw you and you look like you could really use some help. Here - take my umbrella."
He handed me his umbrella and proceeded to rapidly move the 74 bags into the trunk while I went around to the side of the car to retrieve my own umbrella as fast as I could while dumping my purse so he could have his umbrella back and so I could help him. But before I could get back around to the trunk to hand him his umbrella, he had all of the bags in but two. And even though rain was running down his head and chin he still wore a big smile.
I helped him get the last two bags in (lots of help I am) and thanked him for as long and as graciously as I could and as long as he would let me. I told him about the bag boy’s refusal to help and he’d seen the milk bottle explode and the trucks splashing by. I wanted to talk with him more or go buy him a cup of coffee or something, but it was storming and he had to go, I had to go and you know how it goes.
When I got in the driver’s seat I pulled out the hand towel Tom so prudently keeps behind the seat at all times, dried my glasses and my face, turned on the air conditioner because it must have been about 90 steamy degrees in there and called Tom at work to tell him that not only was I not home yet, I’d not even left Slidell.
I began trying to tell him what I’d just been through and about the young man who had just saved my life (in my books) in such a glorious grace note kind of way, but I couldn’t get past the part where the guy showed up next to me by the car trunk telling me he wanted to help. Tom started laughing and couldn’t stop. I don’t know why.
I suppose it was the image of me he had in his head. I guess. I suppose it was the one of me standing there at the back of the car all bedraggled with a grocery bag down over my eyes and glasses, rain streaming down the bag over my face, my purse and clothes, a busted gallon of milk nearby, a cast on my leg and 74 bags of wet groceries to be unloaded from the cart to the car.
I also suppose it was the godliness in the young man that led him to ignore his own comfort and to take the time to help a total stranger on a stormy afternoon in the middle of a grocery store parking lot. I don’t suppose that - I know that.
I told Tom later - after enduring the hour and a half it took me to get home (which is normally a 25 minute easy drive) in the heavy pockets of rain leaving one unable to see even the next vehicle ahead on the slow moving roads and drying out a bit - the young man certainly deserved a "Grace Notes" post if anyone ever did and that I was going to write one about him.
But I also told Tom - I just hope the guy’s not a blogger, too, because I’d hate to see what his post would be about me! You think?