Are you really trying this with me?
It's a strange thing when someone lies to your face and you both know it.
I left the house Good Friday eve feeling pretty good. I love the Easter holiday season. Ever since I was a kid I was captured by this dramatic story -- how Jesus is tortured, died, buried, and all of this I found very sad. Every year I used to hope somehow he'd figure out a way to get out of his trouble and convince his Dad to save him or something. But that ain't how the story goes. I'm not saying that I liked the fact that Jesus suffered, but my child's mind completely embraced the injustice and absurdity of his situation.
So I'm in line at Walmart, which is packed as it always is this time of the week, just got paid, it's Friday night ... and they're selling what seems like more candy than Halloween, all yellow and pink and purple and lining the aisles; there are carts filled with chocolate eggs and Easter baskets, and people trolling for random home and beauty items.
And this twenty-ish/teenager steps in front of me and puts her products ahead of me on the rubber check-out belt. She's buying a relaxer and leave-in conditioner and she has green and blue stars tattooed on her neck. Her hair has these weird red and blond streaks running through it like she's been coloring her hair on her own for a while. (Not that any of this is good or bad, I just notice things sometimes.)
I think we (my husband's off tracking-down toilet paper) were ahead of you. I am saying this, leaning-in beseeching her to not be this way.
No, no you weren't, she's saying, her eyes cow-like but blood-shot.
I can feel the anger. Hers. And mine.
Just say, No, no you weren't, the anger assures me.
I reserve a certain type of disdain for this type of girl. The kind you keep only for yourself.
You're going to take that?! You can fight. YOU CAN REALLY FIGHT, the anger says.
What happened to Miss I love Good Friday so much? Where is she?
I let it go. Step back, she surges ahead.
Teller rings her up.
$15.75.
She only has a 5. Red-splotch marks on her neck. Embarrassment?
Her mother lumbers onto the scene, her back arching backwards like a sideways U, barely looks at the girl, hands the cashier a 20.
What's this juice, she asks then, as if knocking the bottle over and pushing the girl back towards me. Not waiting for an answer mom's already over it, doesn't care, grazing party's now leaving the store. The girl's flip-flopping after her.
My husband returns, 12 double-sized rolls for only $5.69, he's saying brightly. (Whoo-hoo! As we've gotten older, so many things make us happy, perhaps because we feel free of the whims of our parents/caretakers and more in control of ourselves.)
I am already forgetting her. But what just happened here? I would gladly have let anyone go ahead of me, but it's my perception of her trying to take advantage of me that made the anger appear. The fact that she looked like me in some respects, this added to my annoyance.
I used to always want to see Jesus fighting and kicking ass. Don't just sit there and take it! Don't walk into that trap! I pleaded with Jesus to have some kind of reason. And yet, I could lose mine on a dime.
Those were the rules. Jesus dies. But then he defeats death. This idea of defeating death has grown larger in my imagination and the complexity and strangeness of this idea seems even wilder to me than it did when I was a child. I can see the little ways I might diminish myself by giving in to anger and how that in a sense is a kind of death. I returned home feeling a more sober happiness than I'd left with, like gratitude for something I enjoy but do not wholly understand, like something new was beginning, even if I didn't know exactly what it was ...
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When you refused to give in to your anger and, instead, chose how you would react, you did sacrifice yourself.
Your are blessed.
I'm guessing the opposite of a lot of those who claim to be His followers.
Sometimes it helps to take it a step further and ask yourself "What need of hers is she meeting by cutting in line?" Trying to understand this can help as well, it can help lead to compassion, which is what Jesus was about.
That sentence really spoke to me. Thanks.
The WWJD questions are getting redundant and pointless.
Perhaps christians should look at non christians for examples of how to be a better person.
Or better yet, ditch the whole, I must die to myself and be reborn as Jesus mentality.
Sometimes people get in line, realize they forgot something, and send someone to fetch it, yet do not get out of the line. Often the other person takes too long to come back and the entire line is forced to wait.
It's easy to take offense at others, while remaining oblivious to one's own rude behavior. Didn't Christ say something about that?
I have begun to identify myself as a red-letter Christian: I am looking more at the things Jesus is quoted as saying to have a better understanding of His teachings. Your dilemma as outlined and the resulting rhetorical WWJD makes me think "turn the other cheek." But does this solve the problem of impoliteness in our society? The more we let it slide, the more this behavior is reinforced.
Therein lies the rub. My problem is that there are days I find the PERFECT thing to say in the nicest way. And we both feel better (or so I hope). Then there are days that I am just completely not having it and it is better to keep my mouth shut! (And worse for my ego -- I think of the perfect thing to say an hour later -- Sigh!).
Maybe to make up for this icky feeling these life events leave in my gut, I should go out and do something selfless as soon as possible to bring balance to my world.
Thanks for challenging me tonight.
-klroutt
On my last trip to the grocery store, an older gentleman handed me a coupon for $8 off. He didn't have enough groceries to use the coupon, so he waited at the checkout till he saw someone (me) with a cart full.
Some time before that, I randomly handed over some reward stamps for pots and pans (that I had left over after I had collected all the pans I wanted) that allowed a young woman to acquire her first pan for her first apartment.
Some time prior to that, when the store was extremely busy and no carryout was available, a young couple stopped at my car where I was laboriously unloading my shopping cart, and without even asking, grabbed all my bags and loaded them for me. (I have MS and I am sure they could see I was at the very end of my energy.) I was so grateful I teared up.
Just take a deep breath when you run into another Ms. Rude and think about the last time that someone allowed you to go ahead of them or the last time that you did some small thing for someone that made just her day.
Fry me some greeeeeen tomatoes!
;-)