On Wednesday, July 27th, the food bank line-up existed but had yet to take form. I positioned myself after the three women who were chatting furthest back from the door, though I wasn’t sure exactly where I stood.
When it got close
to 10:00, the line snapped in place. Julie, one of the women that had been
chatting, had also been paying attention, and redirected two or three people to
their proper place in line. Margaret was behind her and she told three people
their positions behind me, or as she called me, “The guy with the bike”. So it
looks like I’ve been identified. I thanked her for clearing things up. I said,
“Sometimes I get confused.” Margaret, thinking that I was referring to a
general condition of being confused, responded in a sympathetic tone, “That’s
all right! Nobody’s perfect!”
While I was at
reception giving my name and year of birth so the guy could find my file on the
computer, the vegetable lady came to the refrigerator just to my right and had
overheard my year of birth. “One year before me!” she said. I noticed their
fridge had several bricks of butter in it but in my experience they’ve never
given any to food bank clients.
I got number 14 and
then rode to No Frills to buy milk for my coffee. On my way home, I passed
three bike cops, chatting as they rode together. Come to think of it, I rarely
see bicycle policemen that aren’t shooting the breeze with one another. I went
into the centre lane to make a left turn from King onto Dunn Avenue, but was
stopped by the traffic light. The pedal cops had the same idea and were lined
up like ducks behind me as I waited. The only snippet of their ongoing
conversation that I picked up before I turned and left them behind was when one
of them said, “I’d rather work New Years than Caribana!”
A couple of hours
later, when my number was called, my helper was Bruce, who was sweating from
and struggling with the heat.
From the top of the
first set of shelves I took a can of turkey gravy.
Below that shelf there were more bagged snacks and crackers than
usual and I picked a bag of Red Curry Kettle Chips.
From the bottom
shelf there was a small bag of mini Ritz Bits cheese sandwiches and Bruce gave
me a couple of handfuls of Fibre 1 lemon bars.
I skipped the pasta
shelf and the one with the canned beans, but I did take a can of organic lentil
vegetable soup.
Below the soup were
a choice of artificially sweetened ice tea and cans of the healthier brown rice
smoothy. I told Bruce that I’d take the smoothy and declared, “Those are good!”
I think I remembered them as being good because they are sweetened with cane
sugar and have some other healthy ingredients even though they really taste
like a combination between medicine and ass. Bruce said that he liked them too
and that they were good cold. He gave me two.
I took a box of
Shreddies from the last set of shelves.
In the cool section
there was a choice between four small Activia yogourts and a bag of chocolate
milk. I took the yogourt.
The closest thing
to meat they had this time were a couple of beef patties.
The best items they
had were a couple of nice Longos salads in plastic containers. One was a
Tuscany bean salad and the other a cranberry quinoa pumpkin seed salad.
I was totally out
of bread at home so I took one whole-wheat and one raisin loaf.
The
vegetable lady gave me some potatoes, a cucumber, a little bag of strawberries,
and a bag of pea sprouts. She also still had lots of fresh vegetables from the
community garden, such as kale, leaf lettuce, and young onion bulbs. Instead of
putting them in my cloth bag from No Frills, I told her to wait while I got my
plastic bag ready. She told me, “You know how to shop!”
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