2003-08-17 - 4:44 p.m.
YOU�VE COME A LONG WAY, BOYS
The rest of the novel was trashy and terrible. Today, years later, the name of it escapes me. But it had one redeeming line whose underlying truth has stuck with me. In the novel, two Roman soldiers newly assigned duty in England were discussing their situation and Queen Bodicea. �How bad could it be,� said the first. �After all, they are lead by a mere woman.� �I don�t know,� said the second. �Have you seen the fierceness of some of our Roman matrons at a sale?�
I read the novel after an episode in a grocery store. This grocery store was legendary in the area in which I grew up. The store then was located on Ten Mile Road and Coolidge but it was known by its origins on Dexter and Davison in what the some adults called �the old neighborhood� and others called �one of the old neighborhoods.� Early Friday afternoons, just before Shabbat, the place was packed with old women and their grocery carts, all seeking the choicest meat and the best bargains on other food.
Once, when young, these women were determined and formidable. When I was in my early twenties, they were older, formidable, and scary. My grandmother, who decided I needed an outing, had taken me there. I was having trouble taking myself on outings because my MS had flared up and I could not see very well. At the time, my lack of vision added to my fear. In retrospect, having gone on a few other occasions when I could see, had I been able to see better, I would have been more frightened.
The first challenge was the parking lot. God must have looked out for those women because reports of actual accidents were rare. Desperately busy women, flitting about in cars, most of them having learned to drive---to the extent they learned at all�in later years. Some of them were able to see clearly. Some of them were not. Some of them paid attention. Most of them did not. The only saving grace was that their driving tended to have two speeds: slow and slower. A reasonably quick pedestrian could dodge the cars but many of them were not reasonably quick pedestrians.
What they lacked in speed in cars or walking through the parking lot, they made up for when heading toward a sale on gefilte fish or a well-priced chicken. Just as anger turned Bruce Banner into the Amazing Hulk, one hand on a grocery cart transformed them. Unfortunately, given their aim, the carts might as well have been bumper cars.
That day, I had one hand on my grandmother�s cart when, suddenly, she saw something. She started toward it with her cart but she could not force it through so she suddenly changed directions�and there I was, alone, in the middle of Dexter-Davison Market. A cart moved past me, just missing my toe. I felt it brush past. Another bumped me from behind. Foul language would have followed�not from me but from them�had they been different people. Curses, the colorful Yiddish curses, erupted, a few in English. To this day, I am grateful that they did not take. I would not like to grow like an onion with my head in the ground.
And then, Grandma returned and saved me. A few years went by and I encountered the novel. More years went by and I almost forgot the whole thing...
Until today when I found myself with Mr. Philately at Kohls Grocery Store. Kohls Grocery Store is going out of business and was having a clearance sale. The entire town was there and some from out-of-town. I could see but it did not help. There were carts to the right of me, carts to the left of me, determined carts and pushy carts, carts rushing from shelf to shelf and carts trying to run through me.
Whatever could be said of the Roman matrons at a sale could be said of this crowd�and a lot of them were men. I am not sure that this is what society had in mind in terms of equality but...
You�ve come a long way, boys.
LAST YEAR: The Quest for Perfection
TWO YEARS AGO: on vacation
IN CASE YOU MISSED THEM:
I Am NOT Frodo
Needing God
Under the Stairs
Zit
Justice and Peace
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Copyright 2006 by Ellen |
