Deli (En)Counters

Last week I decided that grocery shopping was entirely too proletariat or something and did other things. This week we have no food. And by no food, I mean a cupboard full of assorted impulse buys (This enchilada sauce comes in a pouch instead of a can! I must buy it! These granola bars are blue! Everyone will eat these!) and a refrigerator full of condiments and noodly green onions. So what's a girl to do, but go and hang out at the deli counter?

Seriously. I was at the deli counter at one of our local grocery stores, just waiting my turn. A man came up behind me and started waiting his turn, too. The Hooligan was reading the labels of everything in sight while hopping from foot to foot, stopping occasionally to tell me the rules of the intricate game he was playing with himself.

Deli Lady #1 came over and took my order and started to work on filling it.
Deli Lady #2 came over and surveyed the scene, looked at the man behind me and said: "Are you two together?"
Man behind me, without skipping a beat said "Not yet!"
Deli Lady #2 looked briefly confused while Deli Lady #1 and I exploded in the sort of laughter that comes from being taken completely by surprise by something witty.
Deli Lady #2 gets it and said "Oh, you're cute!"
Man behind me, again without skipping a beat, said: "I wish she'd think that!" while gesturing at me.

Folks, I am rarely speechless. I can almost always blurt something. I'm not promising that it would be particularly appropriate or witty, but rarely am I ever at a complete loss for words. But there, in the deli section of one of my favorite grocery stores, I stood as mute as the rotisserie chickens. To be in the face of such quick wit and just pure, delightful impishness just made my day.

Nobody ever hits on me anymore. I am not the girl who is easily flattered by unwanted attention. I have never been the girl to thrust my heaving bosoms at people and bat my eyelashes. I have almost always been the girl talking to herself in her head and assuming that no one can see her when she laughs at her own joke that she told herself or if she dances a little bit for no reason at all. I am the girl who has been raised to be respectful and kind to just about everyone regardless of gender, and flirting always seemed so insincere. I am also the girl who always assumed that if someone was staring in my direction, I either had a booger showing or they were staring at the person next to me. But still. Nobody ever hits on me anymore.

I'm not saying this delightful fellow was hitting on me, either. I suspect he was just amusing himself. But in so doing, he amused me and Deli Ladies Numbers One and Two. I suppose the feminist in me should get all uppity and how dare he degrade my status as a human person with breasts by making a lighthearted jest rooted in the fact that we were different genders. I suppose the gray-haired married woman in me should be offended. Did he not see my ring and the child who is clearly mine? I suppose the mother in me should be outraged, too. The nerve of some people to just joke about such things in front of children! How will I explain that to my child? Won't someone think of the children?!

I wasn't offended. I wasn't all simpering and flattered, either. I was terribly amused. It was just one of those wonderful, slightly off-color things that pass the time while you're waiting for your corn dog. It was a tiny connection with three other human beings where we could share surprised laughter during an otherwise boring and mundane activity. I love when people step out of the bounds of propriety and just say stuff. I grow so weary of treading around people's over-large toes and fearing that the joke might not be funny. I grow even wearier of my own out-sized toes.

There are real problems, real prejudices with malicious and callous implications. There are mean-spirited people who seek to tear down and belittle with their words, their humor. There was that one terrifying woman in the grocery store once who, when I politely moved aside and said "No, you go ahead," whisper-growled-hissed "Yes, Mother!" at me and almost made my son cry. There was me, irritable and needing to pee, who snapped at the woman behind me in line at Wendy's because she crowded my space. There are racists, sexists, size-ists, age-ists, bigots, loudmouths, lechers, losers, degraders, and douches everywhere. That sort of nonsense should not be taken lightly. But isn't that all the more reason to step back and enjoy a laugh with a stranger who took a risk and made a silly little joke in spite of the fact that I could have gone all Femi-Ninja on him? Hi-yah!

There are so many giant chips we could carry about on our shoulders. Sometimes we get so stooped and miserable and greasy because of them. It is terribly refreshing when Man About the Deli comes and offers some nice, cool Ranch dip to salve the saltiness and remind us that life is mostly delicious; we should enjoy it in all of its carcinogenic absurdity. Also, more importantly, that we should sometimes just get over ourselves and our over-thinking, over-sensitivity, over-compensation. To paraphrase everyone's favorite sexist villain, Sigmund Freud, sometimes a corn dog is just a corn dog.

Big Sticky Tootsie Pop Hug

I am a Tootsie Pop. A hard outer shell, with a soft and gooey center. My kids know this, so they have learned just how to patiently lick away until my gooey-ness is exposed. Sometimes, people with especially sharp teeth can just plow right into that gooey part without warning. I don't like that as much. But sometimes when the moon is right or if I've been listening to a lot of REM, I crack open that outer shell and give folks a view of the soft stuff. Really, and shhh! this is a secret, I'm mostly soft stuff.

I have spent the day getting ready to take my monkeys on a trip for a little breaking of spring, and to my delight, a large part of this day has been spent in communication with various stranger-friends who for no other reason in the world except that they're nice, have volunteered to guest post for me while I'm away. This is the sort of thing that reassures me about the future of the human race. Overly dramatic? Perhaps. Perhaps not, though. I was going to say that it's not like we're changing the world here. But maybe we are?

Technology and the internet and blogs and social networking all have their damaging effects on the world in one way or another. In the wrong hands, they can be used to tear down, to divide, to isolate, to disengage. I'm a hands-on kind of girl, so I prefer my life to be in 3D for the most part. But I also believe in the power of the written word. These words that we all work so hard to get down on the screen every day - most of us for no tangible compensation - these words matter. Sometimes they're silly, sometimes they're terse and driven by exhaustion, sometimes they're angry or moving or profound or misspelled or nonsensical. But always they matter. They matter to the lives that they touch, they matter as the tiny threads that weave people closer together, they matter because they're yours.

Six months ago I got my first actual reader on this blog. It was a thrill and a rush to know that some stranger out there read something I wrote and responded to it. To my amazement, some people responded again and again, and brought other people to respond as well. And now I have this little crowd of stranger-friends who inspire me daily, encourage me both directly and indirectly through their words, their tenacity and their dedication. That's you. All of you. You have changed my world.

So as I sit here, sleepy and satisfied, I want to say thank you. To all of you. Even if this is the first time you've ever read this blog, thank you. Thank you for having the courage to say things out loud, to follow your dreams, to think, to reason, to write, and to share. It's people like you who do change the world. Each time one of you reaches out to another person with a comment, an encouragement, a note, a laugh, or any of the other many things you do, you are making this world a better place to be. So thank you, from the bottom of my great big, gooey heart. Thank you.