Second Hand Anger

            The Parkdale food bank line-up on Saturday seemed a bit longer than usual for 9:45. That was probably because it was close to the end of the month but before the arrival of the cheques from social services.

            It was the warmest Saturday so far this year and so it made waiting in line much less uncomfortable than it has been. The lack of breeze though caused the second smoke to linger in the area where it was produced and I could definitely feel it choking me even more than the chronic norm.

            Most of the regulars were there already but two faces that stood out further ahead in line were those of a 30ish mother with her 5ish blonde daughter. A little behind them was the guy who is always smoking his e-cigarette, except that he wasn’t wearing his hoody for the first time and I could see that he was bald.

            A nervous looking woman pulling a cart came walking down the street and kicked a twig that was lying on the sidewalk and it hit me on the shin. She said sorry and as an explanation said that she’d kicked it so people wouldn’t think it was her broomstick, then she crossed to the other side of Queen.

            The line filled up behind me fairly quickly and then Bart, the young man with the condition that seems like it might be coprolalia, which is the tendency to uncontrollably blurt out arguments and statements, usually to no one in particular, arrived a couple of people later, marked his spot with a bag and then stood away.

            Almost immediately Bart started swearing at cars or people across the street but while the others in line usually ignore it, this time a big woman closer to the front snapped, “Hey! There’s a kid here!” Bart walked quickly about half a block east for a while and then came back to continue his speech habits unchecked.

            Though I know that the woman’s reaction came from an instinct of protectiveness, I really see no logical reason for people to try to suppress the use of strong language around children. Kids pick up language habits from parents and other close acquaintances but not from strangers in line-ups. As a poet, I like all language, including the strong variety but consider certain words like “fuck” to be more effective when used sparingly rather than as punctuation. I raised my daughter in Parkdale and she heard swearing and saw unconventional behaviour all the time. I told her that there was nothing wrong with any words but certain ones should be avoided in school to avoid getting suspended. She grew up to be an eloquent and socially responsible young woman.

            Added to Bart’s usual spontaneous utterances this time were those fluid, nasal inhalations from the back of the throat that we tend to use to gather mucous before spitting. He did spit often, but sometimes he would do it just before another outburst. One time he stepped out to the edge of the sidewalk, horked a loogie, then smiled with satisfaction and exclaimed, “Say hello to little Bart!”

            I had forgotten to bring the book with me that I usually read in the line-up and so I spent a lot of time instead deleting all the calls from my phone going back to March.

            Bart said something to someone unseen about them having been eaten while they were being born.

            At one point a couple of elderly men were passing, about 40 years older than Bart and it seemed that Bart knew the shorter of the two. He let spew a trainload of vitriol on the old man as he continued, perhaps to have breakfast at PARC. A couple of times the man turned to say something back but Bart became even louder and repeated a few times the call for the guy to, “Go and suck your mother’s fuckin cock!” At that point the e-cigarette smoker came back and started trying to tell Bart that he was upsetting the little girl, but it just caused Bart to be more agitated and amplified. I put my hand on the e-cigarette guy’s shoulder and tried to explain to him that Bart was not well and that he was wasting his time trying to reason with him or to try to suppress him with an argument. Finally the guy turned to go back toward the front and said to me, “Obviously he’s a sociopath!” I responded with, “What do you expect? We are on Queen Street in front of PARC!” Then the e-cigarette guy took out a real cigarette and smoked it about three meters away from where the little girl was that he was so concerned about. I guess he thought that the at least 250 known harmful toxins contained in second-hand smoke are less harmful to children than second-hand anger.

            I think that trying to control the behaviour of strangers is like arguing with a rainstorm. In cases like this it is the responsibility of the parent or guardian to teach the child to understand that in the world there are people that for whatever reason have no self-control and that it’s just something one has to learn to deal with. Angry language or behaviour that isn’t directed at a child does the kid very little, if any harm and unlike second hand smoke, one can’t get emphysema from it.

            I had to move away from the smoke sometimes even once the line started moving. I walked east closer to the PARC entrance and saw Helen Posno standing there with her walker. I went over to chat, asking if she was waiting for breakfast. She said that she was there for reflexology therapy. I told her that I used to teach a yoga class at PARC but stopped after three years because not enough students were showing up. I offered the view that the PARC members just weren’t really a yoga group. I’d recounted how one woman asked if she could go for a smoke halfway through a lesson and one time a guy came into my classroom after hearing there was yoga and he’d thought that they’d meant yogourt. When Helen’s reflexology therapist arrived it turned out to be the same nervous person that had kicked the twig into my leg before.

            When the advancing of the line had moved me close to the front, I heard the door person exclaim that last Wednesday the food bank had gotten 117 clients.

            Sometimes people don’t smoke when the line is moving because they don’t want to start a cigarette that they can’t finish. But this time there were people hanging around and smoking that weren’t even in the line-up. The Ethiopian guy who sometimes ends up ahead of me in line even though he started behind was at the front this time and had just lit up a long cigarette. Bart asked him if he could finish it when he went in. He said he could but he kept it anyway.

            My lungs and I were glad to be finally let inside. It’s always one’s name and birth date that are checked on the computer before a client is given a number. Since my birthday had been the day before the receptionist said, “Happy belated” without looking up at me. I got number 30.

            As usual, the first thing that Angie handed me was a bag of six eggs, which is always awkward because one has to keep them separate so they won’t be crushed. It suddenly dawned on me that I could put them in the mid-sized pocket of my backpack where I keep things like my wallet and my camera.

            For the first time in a long time there was no milk and so the only dairy being offered were two small cups of fruit bottom yogourt and what cheese there happened to be on the pizza slices in the two bags she gave me. As usual I got a tube shaped container of frozen ground chicken.

            From Sylvia’s vegetable section I got three potatoes, an onion, one and two half carrots plus a third of a rotten one, a container of cherry tomatoes, a bag of frozen cut yellow beans, a large container of cut and washed arugula and kale mix. I noticed that there were green peppers and I’d just assumed that Sylvia had given me one but when I checked later I saw that she’d forgotten. She might have been distracted by the mother with her little girl, who were just behind me. Though they’d been about seven places ahead they were delayed because this was their first time and the woman had needed to register.

            The shelves had a lot of odd ethnic items this time around. All by itself at the top of one shelf was a package of gourmet biscotti. It reminded me of the first time I’d had that kind of cookie. In the summer of 87 I stayed in a pension in Milano and the proprietor insisted that her tenants not give treats to her elderly mother. But I had a bag of biscotti on the dresser and the old lady used to walk into my room while I was writing, go over to the bag, smile at me, take a cookie and then leave.

            Other international foods included a large can of saag, which my helper pulled out from among several items. Even though she was of Indian descent she wasn’t entirely sure what saag was and had to read the ingredients. It’s 74% mustard leaves, 19% spinach and 3% green chillies. I took it. Another Indian inspired item was a can of mulligatawny soup. From Brazil I received a carton of Vita Coco coconut water with peach and mango puree. Then from Morrocco I got a jar of couscous sauce.

            A little less ethnic, although from the Netherlands was a bag of “Say Yes to No” Dutch Gouda bread chips. I also got a small can of Second Cup hazelnut cream instant coffee.

            For the last few months there has been lots of canned beans but no tuna. This time though there were no canned beans offered but there was a can of tuna.

            The only cereal they had was chocolate kids cereal, so I didn’t take any.

            For the first time in a few weeks I took a couple of loaves of bread and they seemed to have lots of it. I grabbed a couple of non-sliced loaves that looked like they were multi-grain.

            There was certainly an exotic selection of shelf items this time at the food bank, though it was very sparse in terms of dairy and there was zero fruit.

I had $5 in my pocket and so immediately after the food bank I went to No Frills to see if they had any deals on fruit. Their best bargain was three grapefruit for $2, so I took six.

There were two guys begging outside of the supermarket. One of them was sitting on the concrete outside the entrance and the other was sitting in his bare feet on the Queen Street side of the store. I got the impression that both guys were from the same group home in the neighbourhood. While I was unlocking my bike the barefoot man asked me for “a five”. He had a lot more than I had on the sidewalk in front of him.