Creatures of Habit

            We are creatures of habit. I tend to arrive at the food bank at 9:45 and the other regulars are habitually faithful to their favourite times of getting there. If I were to come much earlier for several Saturdays in a row I’m sure that I would find that the first person there would almost always be the first one there, the second would consistently be number two, and so on. Robbie is usually just ahead of me, and that was the case this time. The big, friendly Jamaican woman gets there just after me and others further back in the line end up getting there at each their own specific time every week. Collectively then it’s almost as if the food bank line-up is a snaking human timepiece.

            One of the early birds is the ultra skinny sixty-something woman named Brenda. She went back to sit down on the steps of 1501 Queen St west and have a smoke. A large woman with two armfuls of tattoos who’d just arrived asked her if they were going use the number system that day. I said, “I hope so” but Brenda said that she thinks first come first serve is the best system. I argued that with first come first serve people keep coming earlier and earlier just so they can be t the front of the line. The food bank and the management of 1499 Queen don’t want people to come there at 7:00, three and a half hours before the food bank opens. Brenda declared, “8:30 is early enough for me!” I added that the random number system stops people from butting in and eliminates disputes over places in line. She continued to be adamant that first come first serve was better because that’s just the way it works everywhere else such as on the TTC or at the race track.

            Brenda then began complaining to the tattooed woman about “Orientals” that have the habit of jumping queues. She said she sees them do it all the time at the racetrack and that they even try to push people to get ahead of them. Brenda declared that she pushes right back. She explained that they do it because that’s the way life is in Hong Kong and that's why she doesn't want to go to Hong Kong.

            I looked at an online forum on this issue and certainly most westerners expressed the belief that Chinese people have a tendency to jump queues. I was more interested in Chinese responses to the question and found that they were divided, with some saying it happens a lot in China but with others maintaining that queue jumpers are frowned upon by those that wait in long line-ups in China. It was sensibly pointed out that anywhere in the world where the population outnumbers the services being offered there will be queue jumping and that happens a lot in Europe as well. An example of this in the United States is Black Friday.

            Brenda added, "And they pretend they don't understand you but they do. I know you speaky the Inglee! They’re just playing dumb!" This would be hard to prove. I would think though that if one has limited proficiency in a language, when a native speaker of that language is angry about something they speed up their voice and their enunciation changes and so it may be very possible that when non-native speakers say they don’t understand, they really don’t.

            Speaking of other languages, while waiting I read a couple more pages of Flaubert’s “The Legend of St Julian the Hospitaler”. At the point of Julian's childhood when he takes such pleasure in killing animals that he faints at their moments of death, his father decides to introduce him to the art of hunting. This family is so rich that they have packs of different breeds of dogs for every breed of animal they hunted, plus a squadron of different types of falcons for every kind of bird they would want to bring down. Hunting tended to be a social event but Julian preferred to go out alone with his horse and his Scythian white falcon with the blue feet. I don’t know if white falcons with blue feet actually exist though.

            A guy cam up to ask what I was reading and I showed him the cover. He then told me that his daughter wrote a novel called “I Think I Like You”” that is now in its second printing. He said he read it and found four errors, one of them referring to bourbon on her father’s breath. He said that’s wrong because he didn’t start drinking bourbon until he was in college in Ohio. I can’t find any reference to a novel with that title anywhere online.

            A short and stocky middle-aged man with a long beard was holding a liter bottle of tea-coloured booze. A cop car drove by and after it passed he said to someone, “I’ve been drinkin every day since I was 14 and the cops are trying to catch me on a breach of parole so they can put me back in jail and so they take pictures of me when they drive by. That’s why I hold the bottle on its side!” I couldn’t see why the bottle being horizontal would make it any less incriminating. He related how he recently was in court and the judge saw from his arrest records that since Grade three every time he’s been arrested it was because of violence. He said that he pointed out to the judge that if he were to read the transcripts he’d see that in every case he hadn’t started a single one of the fights.

            Robbie’s sister tends to arrive at least half an hour after he does but always puts her bag on his cart to share his place in line, even though they get their food separately. This is one of the many problems that the random system eliminates.

            A cop came out of the west door of 1499 Queen, got on his bike and rode west. Robbie’s sister watched him lasciviously as he pedaled. The big, talkative woman who always comes early said to Robbie’s sister, “You look like you’re about to have an orgasm or are gonna give yourself one later!” Robbie’s sister nodded and kept staring after the bike cop.

            This time, as with the last few weeks, we still didn’t use the random number system but rather the first come first serve method. Marlina started letting people in on time at 10:30 and that’s been the case for several weeks in a row.

Downstairs there were more volunteers than usual.

From the shelves I took a bag of sea salt and pepper kettle chips; some jalapeno mustard; a 311 gram bag of blueberry and pecan granola; a 450 ml bottle of orange juice; and a can each of tuna and chickpeas. There was lots of pasta and canned soup but I didn’t take any.

Angie wasn’t there but the young woman whom she’d been training last week was minding the meat and dairy station. I didn’t want any 2% milk but I took the four small fruit bottom yogourts and the tub of organic hummus. I eschewed the frozen ground chicken and hot dogs but pointed at the container of Greek yogourt with honey and was about to offer to exchange the other yogourts for it but she gave it to me anyway.

Just as I was about to step over to Sylvia’s vegetable section a box of bananas fell over with the bunches spilling on the floor. While she was picking them up I said, “The bananas slipped on themselves!”

She gave me four ripe but not rotten bananas; four vine ripened tomatoes (three of which were fairly firm); a pack of celery sticks; a pear with a couple of soft brown spots; a golden delicious apple and a vegetable marrow. She asked the person after me if she wanted mushrooms, which meant that she’d forgotten to offer me some, so I asked if I could have some and she exclaimed, “Of course you can have some” and handed me a pack of sliced cremini mushrooms.

The older Ukrainian lady, whose name I think might be Marlena, was handling the bread section for the first time and applying to it her usual businesslike manner. I settled on a package of mini-double-chocolate muffins. I’m sure that Marlena is as nice as the next person, but her manner has the appearance of being unfriendly. It’s not that I would expect her to smile but I can’t imagine that she would last as a counter person in food service if she always looked like she was tolerating you and coldly asked in the end, “We finished?”