Thank you grocery store man

“Here, why don’t you have one,” he said, pushing one of his assorted tote bags toward me on the conveyor belt. “My wife has so many of them we can’t fill them all.”

I demurred. He insisted.

Grocery Shopping Husband (GSH) struck up a conversation with me in line at checkout in way that felt so Old Normal. It’s been years since any interaction felt so normal.

In the moment, it felt a bit odd, but also completely familiar. We engaged in a dance that, until recently, was unconscious and natural. But it is a dance, and it involves etiquette and steps.

These were the steps that led to our interaction.

1. I said, “Would you excuse my reach please, I’d like to get one of these,” I said, pointing to the rack of tote bags for sale. Step 1 involves showing courtesy to someone before you step or reach in front of them.

2. He saw an opportunity to save me a dollar and lighten his own overflowing bag-of-bags, and probably an opportunity to have a nice chat with a stranger. So he offered me one of his bags so I didn’t have to buy an extra.

3. We did the brief, “Oh, I couldn’t,” and “Oh, yes, you could,” two-step. This led to. . .
4. Smiling light chat about the price of groceries, mutual appreciation of each other’s good humor, and a pleasant “Have a great afternoon” to send us on our way.

And although he didn’t ask me and I wouldn’t ever voice my judgment of another shopper’s order in front of them, he made the correct fatherly choices in groceries. Lots of good quality meat and cheese, eggs, green vegetables, mostly unprocessed foods, and a very modest amount of “easy carbs”.

GSH and his (obviously high-quality) wife are not feeding their children pre—packaged diabetes.

I walked out of the store smiling and light-hearted. Thank you, GSH.

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But this is my Substack, and there’s a cloud to be found in every silver lining. What came before this gratifying exchange wasn’t uplifting.

Another high school checkout clerk couldn’t rectify a mistake she made in entering the tender amount in the till.

Because she can’t do arithmetic. She can’t do it in her head. And she either can’t, or didn’t think to, do it by pencil and paper, or even by calculator on her phone.

I watched the nervous look on her face and the frozen set of her shoulders, wincing. Social humiliation is exaggeratedly difficult for me. When I see someone in a panic because they’re caught out in public not knowing what to do, I either want to run away and hide, or do something to help her.

But you can’t help young people in situations like this. They’re more likely to get offended at being offered help (it makes them feel even more “seen” in their deficiency, I would guess) than they are to be able to accept it.

Once, I tried to help a cashier in a similar situation by offering to show him how to count back change. I told him my mother had taught this to me a long time ago because “what if the cash register stops working and you still have to do your job?” and that it saved me many times.

No dice. I got a sullen glare. I’ve never offered again.

The girl at the register yesterday was a repeat of my trip through the McDonald’s drive-through six months ago. Then, I watched a teen girl get flustered and turn alternately rigid and red in the face for one minute and 20 seconds while she tried to figure out how to make change after she keyed in the wrong amount.

There’s nothing to do but keep a neutral expression and look away. You can’t help.

And even if you can, in the moment, you can’t give these kids what their parents and our pricey, pricey public school system (you should see the taxes on my 980 sq foot cottage) failed to give them. A solid foundation in reading, writing, and arithmetic.

Yes. The 3 Rs. The ones that are “old fashioned.” “Outmoded”. “For old people.”

We have failed these children. Parents? You are not good enough. Shame on you.

Public schools? You are worse than useless. You are offensive.

Last week, I met a young man of 21 who works as a teacher’s aide in the public schools. Remember that he is Generation Z, so when you hear what he has to say, keep in your mind that it’s coming from the youngest adults. It’s not coming out of my mouth, so you can’t write it off as “old man crankiness.”

This young man told me that he gets physically struck by students every single day. He said that most teachers do, as well.

”We can’t discipline them, we’re not allowed. We just have to take it,” he said.

The “correction” given to violent students?

You’re not going to believe this.

They get sent to something called the “wiggle room.” This is, apparently, a room where students are sent for a time-out until they “re-regulate their emotions.”

Yes. Hit a teacher in 2023 and get sent to the “wiggle room.” Not suspended. Not expelled. Not given one more chance to modify your behavior before you’re sent to a reformatory school.

You get the “wiggle room” where you can “re-regulate.”

But that wasn’t the part of this young man’s story that most interested me. This was.

”The teachers literally are not teaching them any math, skills, or actual history, or writing. They don’t have time. This week, the entire class was about equity, social and emotional learning, and racism.”

I asked him directly: “Are you saying there was actually no basic instructional content in math, writing, history, economics, anything?”

”Yes,” he said.

And that’s how it is most of the time.