All Drunked Up With Places to Go

           

            On Wednesday at 11:00 I went to the food bank to get a number. There was a short wait while some volunteers unloaded a Second Harvest truck. I wrote down some ideas for a narrative analysis assignment that would be due soon. I got number sixteen and went home.

            When I returned, it was close to 13:30. I was parking my bike on King Street when Sue and another volunteer came out for a smoke break just before the rush. As they walked to the corner, Sue complained, “It was so cold this morning!” The guy countered, “It was refreshing!” She argued, “It was cold!” He insisted, “It was refreshing!” After I’d locked my bike, I walked past them and heard him telling her that when he was growing up in Jamaica he’d thought that the summer was eight months long.

I didn’t spend much time sitting. After number fifteen had been called, I went and stood by the entrance. While the doorkeeper was waiting to call more numbers, perhaps it was because I was the only one nearby, but she struck up a conversation with me. She commented, “Everyone looks so grumpy today!” I said, “Maybe it’s because grumpy rhymes with hungry.” She said that she’d heard that there’s a new word in the dictionary: “Hangry”. Apparently it’s a composite of “hungry” and “angry”.

            After I’d begun shopping and had taken my selections from the first volunteer’s shelves, I was just crossing over to Sue in the cold section when a very drunk man in his late sixties came up to the shelf, saying he needed something to drink. He was asked what his number was and he told them twenty-three. He was told that number hadn’t been called yet and that he should go back and sit down. He ignored the volunteer and kept on trying to go to the shelf. I think he wanted a can of pop. Sue tried to tell him to sit down as well and wait his turn. He said he didn’t have time for that. I wondered if he had an appointment for which he needed to be drunk to prepare.

How come no one ever tells me that I need to be very intoxicated before showing up to give samples for a lab test? Or why am I never told when arranging for a job interview that I need to be inebriated beforehand so the potential employer can assess my character under adverse conditions?

Sue asked Theresa to deal with the man. Theresa is at least as tall as I am, and though she didn’t touch the drunk guy or even speak to him aggressively, height does seem to have power over people.

There was no milk in Sue’s section, so I had to settle for vanilla soymilk. There was a package of sliced ham and two bag lunches, each consisting of a vegetable wrap, some coleslaw, some veggie sticks and some mayonnaise dip.

The bread section is self-serve now that the regular bread lady is dead. While I was getting some bagels and a loaf of raisin bread, the drunk guy was standing over by the fruit and vegetable lady. She told him, “You’re all drunked up! You’ve got to go!”

I noticed that near the vegetable and fruit lady there’s a brand new double glass door, stainless steel refrigerator. I commented, “This is new!” “Yes” she said, “and it’s all mine!” She gave me a very large sealed bag of pre-washed and chopped lettuce. The only problem with that though is that once it’s open it goes bad fairly quickly. A whole head of lettuce is more practical, because I can put it the stock end in water and preserve it for a while.

Just after I finished unlocking my bike, a tall guy in his thirties, who’d just crossed King Street, asked me, “What number you had?” I told him. He said, “That’s okay then!” and he headed toward the foodbank, but turned, pointed at me and said, “Sorry!”

I was actually pretty hungry when I got home and ate both of the vegetable wraps with the dip.

That evening I rode up Dufferin and while I was waiting for the light at Davenport, a guy pushing his bike walked by wearing a red scarf wrapped around his neck and a toque down over his ears. It wasn’t that cold.

I went up to Merton and Mount Pleasant and then east to Bayview. On the way home there was a rock band playing at Dundas Square. They sounded pretty modern and tight, but I didn’t recognize them as I passed. Looking at the Dundas Square schedule, it looks like it might have been 54-40.

I watched the Roscoe Arbuckle film, “Backstage”, co-starring Buster Keaton. Arbuckle and Keaton are set builders for a theatre company but their antics cause the regular players to quit, so they put on a show of their own.