At the food bank on June 22nd, I couldn’t stay in line because of all the smokers. Whenever one person finished their cigarette in front of me, someone else lit up behind me. It would have been better if they’d all just smoked at the same time. That way I could have at least had a break during their between fag intervals.
A man leaning on
one of the garbage bins was telling another a man by the door that he’d quit
smoking a few years ago but had given up drinking years before that because it
was too expensive and too much trouble.
The man by the door
asked, “Did you stop drinking before you stopped doing this?” He pointed at the
crook of his own arm to indicate the place where one would inject a needle.
The man by the
garbage told him that he had kept on doing drugs for a while after he stopped
drinking.
After several
minutes there was breathable air around my place in line, so I stepped back in.
I was still reading the French tween book, “Klonk” by Francois Gravel and
periodically consulting my Le Robert et Collins French-English dictionary.
There was a tall, scraggly haired man about my age behind me who had been one
of the smokers that had earlier caused me to step out of line. He was watching
me, and finally commented, “A dictionary is a good thing to have!” I closed
mine and showed him the cover, telling him that it was French. He nodded and
said, “Even more important!” Then asked, “Do you speak French?” I answered that
I could speak it well enough to almost understand a book for eleven year olds.
He said, “Well that’s better than me!” Then he proceeded to tell me that when
he’d been younger he’d been immersed in a francophone community in northern
Quebec as a volunteer for Katimavik. He rattled off a few phrases that showed
his pronunciation is far better than mine. It turns out that we have a few
things in common. We’re both originally from New Brunswick and we both had a
parent that was a schoolteacher.
Later on when I
came to pick up my food, the exact same items were on the top of the first set
of shelves as there were the week before: pickles, artificially sweetened
lemonade mix and olive oil spray. I took another can of the spray, even though
I already had five of them and haven’t even tried it yet. But I’m almost
finished with the big jug of canola oil that my upstairs neighbour gave me a
few months ago, and I’ll be very surprised when I start using the spray if each
can lasts very long.
The next shelf down still had lots of
Triscuits, but also some Vegetable Thins and some Ryvita rye crisps with “a
hint of chilli”. I took the crisps.
My helper gave me a handful of granola
bars from the bottom shelf. I usually just keep those in my bag and eat them
when I’m out late at night at open stages after missing dinner.
From the bean shelf I took the navy
beans, which was the very last can that they had.
The cereal section had a choice of Apple
Jacks or Shreddies, so I took the Shreddies.
There was dog food on the bottom of the
last set of shelves, but no cat food this time. Fortunately I bought a big bag
of kibble a while ago that will last for a while.
There were very slim pickings across the aisle where the
refrigerated food is offered. There was a choice between a one-litre bag of
chocolate milk or a litre of 2% milk. I took the white stuff.
I skipped the bread
this time around because I had some already.
The
vegetable lady gave me two tomatoes, three potatoes and a turnip. Then she
asked if I wanted some rhubarb. I enthusiastically said that I did. She gave me
the rest of what she had, which wasn’t much, but rhubarb is a rare treat in my
adult life, though we had lots of it growing alongside the barn when I was a
kid. I commented that it was the first time I’d seen rhubarb at the food bank.
She told me that a lady had just brought it in.
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