First Come, First Served?

            The food bank line-up was a bit longer than usual when I got there but all of the regular early birds were there. I found my place behind the blue gym bag and began reading “The Legend of St Julian the Hospitaler” from where I’d left off as the young Julian continues to slaughter every animal he finds. Finally he comes across a majestic black stag with its mate and their fawn. He murders the fawn first and then the doe. The stag charges him and with his final arrow Julian pierces the beast’s forehead, but it keeps on coming. Just before reaching him though the stag stops and says to Julian, “A curse on you! One day you will murder your own mother and father” and then the proud animal collapses and dies. Holy Catholic Oedipus Stagman!

            Speaking of parents, Tammy was telling someone, “My mother spit me out and there I was, the image of her.” This sounded so mythical I had to look it up. The Egyptian creator deity, Atum was said to have sneezed or spit out his offspring, Shu the god of air and Tefnut, the goddess of moisture.

            When Valdene and Martina arrived in the food bank van, Valdene gave out muffins to those that were willing to come to her and get them. The reviews I overheard were that they were fresh and very good.

            Besides me there are only two or three food bank clients that read books while they are waiting. One of them is a woman that always carries the Bible. Angie was having a smoke on the steps of 1501 Queen and greeted the Bible lady, “Hello sister!” She smiled and called back, “God loves you!” Angie responded, “And you too!”

            I heard Valdene mention that they’d be starting a little later than usual but most of us got into line at 10:30 anyway. A few places ahead of me there was a dispute between a man and woman over which was ahead of the other. Valdene came over to ask what was going on and after hearing what the disagreement was she said to the man, “As a gentleman, shouldn’t you let the lady go first?” I exclaimed “What?” and then said, “Why not as a lady shouldn’t she let the gentleman go first?” Valdene responded, “In a perfect world, yes!” whatever that was supposed to mean. I meant that things shouldn’t be solved according to gender. I told her, “This wouldn’t happen if you brought back the number system!” She said, “A lot of people don’t like the number system!” I asked, “Do you want people lining up here at 6:00?” She answered, “No!” “Then bring back the number system!” “I will, eventually!”

            A few minutes later Valdene came out with a piece of paper and a pen and, I guess based on our exchange, she began to ask each person in line, “Numbers or line-up?” and then she’d check off one of two columns. When she got to the guy with the prematurely grey hair that was ahead of me, he told her with a warning tone, “You don't want to hear what I think!" "Yes I do actually!" "No you don't!" “So you don’t want to answer?" He shook his head. After she'd polled the whole line-up, as she passed me on her way back she said, “It’s three to one for the line-up!" I said, “Meaningless!” She said, “Whatever!” Martina, the doorkeeper mentioned that more people would be coming later. Another volunteer, who may be a co-manager, suggested that the vote might be different if it was wintertime. I was quite surprised that people far back in line would vote for the line-up system over the random numbers, since for someone at the end of the line the random numbers give them better odds than the line-up. If someone is the 30^th person in line the downside of not getting a lower number is that they would end up pretty much where they are already and so they couldn’t lose. It made me wonder if they fully understood the question. I guess for a lot of people it may be that they simply do not like change because what they are used to gives them a certain security. 

            There are some other factors that contribute to a poll like the one Valdene took being flawed. One is that while there is a core group of regulars every Saturday, there are more that don’t come every week and a few that are new each time. Another is that the first ten people in line have a better chance of losing from the random number system, which means that they most probably would have all voted for the first come first serve arrangement, and so their votes shouldn’t really be counted in a poll.

            When the line started moving the guy in front of me would sometimes wait until there was a large gap between him and the person in front of him and then he would pick up his blue gym bag and violently throw it down to remark his spot.

            I got downstairs at around 11:00 and I noticed right away that there was one shelf that was entirely empty and another that was only partially stocked. I heard one of the people at the computers tell someone that they had more perishables than non-perishables this time.

            I noticed that they still had lots of boxes of Atkins peanut butter fudge bars that are sweetened with sucralose and I realized that I’d forgotten to bring my box back to re-donate.

There was nothing in the cereal section but on the top shelf there was a small package of chocolate coconut artisan granola. I got a few granola bars and a juice box. I could have had two juice boxes but decided that I’d liked the single one better because I misread the pack of two, which I figured out later, was the exact same thing. But only taking one juice box instead of two cuts my chances of getting turned into a girl in half, according to Alex Jones, who thinks girls are a bad thing to be.

There was no canned tuna but there were canned beans and so I got a tin of chickpeas. I reminded myself to buy a new can opened because opening one of those cans with the one I’ve had for ten years is like trying to strangle an armadillo to death. It makes one wonder what’s the point of life if every ten years one has to spend another $5 on a manual can opener.

Angie gave me a 750-gram container of sweetened, plain yogourt; three eggs, one of which broke before I got home, but I managed to pour most of it out of the bag and into the frying pan later that night. She offered me the usual frozen ground chicken, frozen chicken wieners and bologna but I turned them down. She also had some frozen beef hot dogs but I didn’t want those either so she dug into the fridge and dug out two burger patties. I asked if they were veggie burgers but she assured me they were the real deal, so I took them.

Sylvia had so many vegetables this time that she didn’t want to bother going through each item. After giving me a 5-kilogram bag of Yukon Gold potatoes from P.E.I (I wonder if one can get P.E.I. potatoes from the Yukon), two plums and two nectarines, she just said for me to take what I wanted. I grabbed a head of leaf lettuce, a package of tomatoes and a seedless cucumber but not the yellow zucchini.

The bread section had a very good selection this time and the person minding the shelves assured me that it was all fresh. I got a loaf of protein bread and some crumpets.

The two nectarines that I got were from the States, seemed like they’d been shipped frozen and now tasted like plastic fruit. It seems weird that one never sees Ontario peaches or nectarines in the food bank this time of year when they are so abundant and delicious.