Being "Graceful" at the Food Bank

            Saturday was my first time of getting up and starting the day with my new denture. It went in okay this time and it didn’t feel like it would fall out but I could feel a minute shifting sometimes when I scratched the area above my upper lip. I guess if it were even close to being as firm as a tooth it would not be removable. Drinking cold liquids is generally more pleasant with the denture in place because when the gap is exposed the fluid shocks my gums. Eating with the false tooth however is a very unpleasant experience. Having that little plastic plate at the roof of my mouth while I’m chewing just feels alien and I don’t think that I’m going to get used to it. 

I didn’t realize how cold it was on Saturday morning until after I’d ridden my bike to the food bank and started standing in line. There weren’t many people waiting because it was so close to welfare cheque time and because it was so cold.

I found out that my place in line was behind a two-wheeled shopping cart with a green plaid liner, but with its owner nowhere in sight.

A large woman sitting beside a skinny woman near the door was telling her about a service a service that she could get from the organization that they used to call St. Christopher House but which she called “Good Neighbour House”. I corrected her that it was actually called the “West Neighbourhood House” and then she remembered that was true.

I noticed a riotous symphony of bird sounds in the tree across the street. I looked up and saw that it was full of red winged blackbirds going crazy. I’d never seen them around there so it was a nice change to see birds in the neighbourhood that are actually native to North America. These guys have a wild vocabulary. In addition to the dramatized tweeting and the “chk chk chk!” they also have this long cross between a whirring noise and the sound of someone tightly winding an alarm clock. I wondered if it was the cold that was making them so excited and then I was curious whether their noises were happy or if they were complaining to each other about the weather.

This was the coldest day in the food bank line-up that I remembered. The woman who’d come just after me went inside for a moment to warm up and came out saying she was told they would start early and that we would be able to get our food right away.

The food bank didn’t start early though. They didn’t even start on time.

The Polish man that owned the green plaid cart finally arrived. On a day like this I could almost forgive him for marking his spot and then leaving to go somewhere warm, but it was nonetheless unfair to everyone else that risked frostbite to maintain the line.

They started taking people in, giving them their numbers and then giving out the food at 10:45. I got in with the third group of five, got a number and sat down. After some seats cleared on my right, a guy on my left said I should move down. When I asked why some people further down said that they’d just been taking whoever was closest without calling numbers. But even if that was the case I knew who I was behind and he hadn’t been called yet. But they did call numbers after all. When a volunteer shouted number 11 I jumped up because I’d forgotten that I had number 12.

Because I’m on my annual vegetarian diet none of the mixes, cookies or O’Henry bars on the first set of shelves were of interest to me. The only thing I took from the pasta, rice and sauce shelves was a jar of mild salsa. I grabbed a bag of chickpeas from the bean shelf, though they also had dried black lentils and lots of canned beans. I picked up a can of tuna because, even though I won’t be eating it till after Easter, it wouldn’t take up too much space on my shelf. In the soup section was a can of Egyptian style curried fava beans, so that was interesting enough to grab.

It looked like they’d finally run out of Aveeno shampoo, but I was given a Mystique five-blade razor from Pharmasave. It doesn’t specify on the package, but judging from the name and the purple, pink and white colour, I’m pretty sure it was designed for women, but it probably does the trick for men too.

All they had for cereal was chocolate kids stuff so I skipped it.

Across the aisle, when I approached Angie’s cold food section and she saw me, she told me to come closer and quickly handed me a 970-gram container of Becel olive oil margarine. I think they usually reserve such an item for families. I eschewed the milk and yogourt this time without explaining why. There was frozen ground beef and some other meat which I guess I could have taken and put it in my freezer until April but I wanted to use my fast as an excuse to defrost the ever shrinking snow cave at the top of my fridge, so I turned it down. Angie had moved along the line of items but I’d politely rejected each one. Her last try was a bag of eggs that I also let her know that I didn’t need this time. Then she declared, “You’re a graceful man!” and went to serve the next person.

The bread lady was minding the vegetable stand and just told people to take whatever bread they wanted from that section. I didn’t need any. The elderly man in front of me asked if he could take her home with the vegetables. She good-naturedly answered, “Maybe in the next life!” She gave me a small Danier bag full of a few potatoes, a couple of carrots and two onions. There was a bin full of acorn squash, some of which had started to go bad but I found a solid one. She said for me to take two so I dug for another.

There was a bin of individually wrapped ponkan oranges, which are a hybrid of mandarin and pomelo. She put three double handfuls into my bag and I saw the reason for the generosity once I got them home. Two-thirds of them were too ripe to eat, so I guess they wanted to get rid of them all that day so some of them could be edible.

            That was weird, Angie calling me a “graceful man”. I suspect that she might be sweet on me.