Some People Just Can't Shut Up

            On Saturday morning I went to the food bank for the first time in three weeks. I brought with me a 12 pack of cans of Boots and Barkley cat food to donate, of which I still have a few. They were left over from my cats that died last year and the best before date might be 2015, but from what I’ve read, as long as cans are not dented the goods inside are good for another five years past the expiry date. A established my place in line and tried to take my donation downstairs but the door was locked at first and was only opened up about ten minutes later.

            They seemed to really appreciate the donation although I thought I heard one of the volunteers tell the woman that took it from me, “You should just take that home!”

            I went back upstairs and floated out of range of the smoke, and then I pulled out my book and finished reading Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl”. That poem and its explosive verbal fireworks ignited the landscape of an era. It’s a poem that doesn’t walk around the human issue on eggshells. It’s a collage of holy unholy cosmic madness harvested from the brown, ragged wallpaper of life and I love it.

            Wayne was there, dancing up a storm and shaking his behind. Gone was the cane that he had the last time I saw him. He was also wearing a pair of sunglasses that had round, green lenses with an eerie holographic eye in each one.

            A little further back in line and just ahead of me was Robbie, who is the opposite of Wayne in almost every way, except for them both being middle aged. Robbie’s stance is the opposite of a dance. He’s a big man, with longish and dishevelled grey hair under a baseball cap and he stands or sits with his personality having long ago melted over a flabby frame. He smokes almost constantly and drags every cigarette to the filter. If he stands he has to stand near something he can bend over and lean on.

            Also on the scene was Robbie’s much shorter sister. She has a long mane of well-kept, thick, grey hair, parted in the middle, that she never ties back. She often arrives after Robbie does and takes the spot directly behind him, no matter who is ahead of her. She is also very protective of her brother.

            As I’ve mentioned before, whatever condition Wayne has seems to prevent him from having any control over what he says. He quite often speaks to no one in particular and everyone in general, but this time he was talking directly to Robbie and saying things that Robbie didn’t like. He barked, “Shut up Wayne!” But of course Wayne can’t shut up for long. He said something about Robbie being a “crackpot” in the sense of doing crack. Robbie shouted, “Fuck off Wayne!” But Wayne kept on talking. Robbie warned, “You’re gonna get it!” Wayne said something else and then Robbie lunged halfway towards him, causing Wayne to back up and say, “Sorry! Sorry!” Robbie’s sister rushed in to try to calm her brother down. Robbie walked down the street. Wayne started talking to the sister about Robbie being a crackpot. She shouted, “No he’s not! Not any more!” The “Crackpot”, “No he’s not!” exchange went back and forth a couple more times, until Wayne said, “No, he’s a good guy.” The sister shouted, “No he’s not!” because she’d thought Wayne had called her brother a crackpot again. She told Wayne that is she hadn’t been there he would have gotten hit. He apologized again.

            A little later on the whole thing started all over again, though I don’t know what Wayne said this time but it caused Robbie to move towards him quickly in a threatening way, though he didn’t have his hands up. Wayne once again apologized profusely. He tried to shake Robbie’s hand but Robbie refused and told Wayne to “Fuck off!”

            At one point Wayne noticed that I was watching and for the first time actually spoke to me, asking me, “What are you staring at, tough guy?” Then he walked over to me and offered me a cigarette. I shook my head and he asked, “You don’t smoke?” I shook my head again. He walked in reverse back to his place in line, saying he didn’t want to turn his back on me.

            Wayne began chanting, “God save the queen!” and then “God save the queers!” Then he started repeating the two phrases together while holding his hand out with his wrist limp. He seemed to really feel like he was on to something with this, because he would stop everyone he knew that was walking by or just shout to people to say, “God save the queers!” He called, “Hey Robbie! God save the queers!” Robbie just responded bitterly, “Yeah, that’s you alright!”

            The line began to move and Wayne started bothering Robbie again. The doorkeeper told Wayne to control himself if he wanted to get some food downstairs. She said she’d already had to deal with one person spitting on another the Saturday before and she didn’t want any more trouble this week. I found it interesting that people thought that someone that runs off at the mouth as a result of a disability would be expected to have more self-control than someone with anger issues.

            A tall, slim man in glasses, with his son of about four and a mature golden retriever stopped near the entrance to the food bank. The people in the line-up in the immediate vicinity of the dog began to melt over the dog. The doorkeeper, Robbie and his sister began petting it and Robbie smiled for the first time I’d seen in all the times I’d observed his sullen face in the food bank line up. Robbie’s sister asked the man the dog’s name. He told her it was “Furly” but that he called her “Beeby”. Furly was wagging her tail happily from all of the attention. He tied Furly to the regulator pipe that sticks out from the wall near the door. He explained that they always leave Furly in front of the food bank so that people can enjoy her while he and his son go across the street to Pete’s for breakfast. As soon as she saw her caregivers walk away, Furly’s tail stopped wagging. It started again briefly when she caught sight of them going into Pete’s, but then it stopped and she just looked worried. People continued to pet her and even Wayne offered her a few cautious caresses, but the attention was no longer giving her any joy.

            An older Polish man, who’d been sitting on the steps when I’d arrived, put his cart down in front of me as he stepped in line. I asked him why he didn’t go in front of Robbie as well, since he’d only gotten there just as I was locking my bike. The man just smiled and shrugged. A woman came up and was chatting with him in Polish when the doorkeeper called for the next five to go down. The woman stepped along behind her friend as the fifth person. I exclaimed, “Where is she going?” The doorkeeper asked whether she had been in line. I told her that she’d just arrived. She went downstairs after her and five minutes later she escorted her back out. The woman walked in angry embarrassment down the street rather than to the back of the line. I asked, “So that means I’m number five, right?” The doorkeeper nodded and said I could go ahead.

            Standing near the back of the desk and chatting with the receptionist was a new volunteer, a cute and very well developed young woman. While the receptionist took my card she asked the young woman how her courses were going. She said she was passing them all this year and that in two years she would graduate. I assumed she was talking about high school rather than college.

            Wayne was standing at Angie’s window. He had an unlit cigarette in his mouth and he was talking about all of the items being offered to him rather than selecting them and moving on. Angie complained that he was spitting on the counter as he talked. Another volunteer was about to step in to shop on his behalf but he managed to make it through. He bypassed Sylvia’s vegetable stand because he said he doesn’t cook and then moved on to the shelves. Sylvia exclaimed, “That man is a handful!”

            Angie gave me two half-litres of milk; half of a 400-gram brick of havarti cheese; four eggs; four 114 ml apple juice cups; a choice between hot dogs and ground chicken; a choice between yogourt and cottage cheese; and a choice between a bag of perogies and a package of lasagna. I took the ground chicken and the perogies looked much more substantial and less pre-fabricated than the lasagna. I was glad the cottage cheese was 1% this time. Last time it was 0% and whatever they put into a zero fat cottage cheese to hold it together seems to be as hard to clean off my dishes as white paint.

            Sylvia had yellow spaghetti squash and was about to give me one but said she would find me a better one. When I got home I noticed that the one she’d given me was rotten in its end anyway. The leaf lettuce she offered me looked sadder than Robbie, but I took it anyway. Once I’d picked out all of the brown parts later it was good for half a salad. She also gave me five potatoes and five small onions.

            The cute, young and very friendly volunteer was my guide through the shelves.

            In the cereal section, among the kid’s cereals and the Cheerios, I found a bag of cinnamon crunchy bar granola.

            For the first time in a long time I took a bag of pasta. I took the twisted kind, like Archimedes would have eaten if the ancient Greeks had had pasta. Below that, among the cans off diced tomatoes I found a jar of salsa.

            There were a few canned soups, but I took the only carton of beef broth.

            She offered me a choice between canned tuna and peanut butter. I selected the tuna and she gave me two.

            The canned bean shelf was full this time and when I chose the chickpeas she gave me two cans, one of which contained organic garbanzos.

She gave me a couple of handfuls of restaurant servings of jam, marmalade and honey.

            The final shelf had the snacks, crackers and cookies. One metallic bag was a mystery. It could have had cookies, crackers or tortilla chips inside, but I decided to go with the bag of G.H. Cretors gourmet Chicago Mix popcorn.  I discovered on trying to find out if “Chicago Mix” was really a thing, that it isn’t really a Chicago food tradition at all. In fact, a company named Candyland from St Paul, Minnesota put together caramel corn and cheddar cheese popcorn and was trying to find a name for it. They decided correctly that calling it “Chicago Mix” would sell a lot better than “St Paul Mix”. I found out as well that G. H. Cretors and two other companies are being sued by Candyland for trademark infringement.

            I skipped the bread section this time because I had enough at home.

            Though the vegetables were a disappointment, there was a fair amount of dairy this time. Getting any kind of real cheese is rare, so the havarti was a nice change. The shelves at the food bank seemed to be better stocked this time than usual. Perhaps it’s because they are getting closer to Christmas.

            After the food bank I immediately rode down to the No Frills at Jameson and King to see if I could get some fruit. Sitting on the sidewalk outside of the supermarket near the bike post ring was an obese young man panhandling with kind of a slurred voice. His facial features suggested that he has Down’s syndrome. He asked me for change and I said, sorry. He then requested that I at least buy him something but I turned him down. Then I thought I’d let him know that there’s a food bank up the street. He asked where and so I said at PARC. He nodded. I added that they also have a free breakfast and he nodded again in a way that said he wasn’t interested.

            Inside I ran into an older woman that I’d chatted with a few times before back when I used to teach yoga at PARC. She was a friend with two of my students though she had only said that she was thinking of attending. She’d wondered if they’d cancelled my class but I informed her that I’d quit because no one had been showing up.

            We browsed the grapes together. I found one bag the contents of which weren’t too soft but most of them weren’t worth buying. I bought some blackberries and a bag of red grapefruit. I also picked up three chicken legs.

            When I got home, after putting my groceries away I went back out and up the street to Vina Pharmacy to refill two prescriptions of steroid cream for my psoriasis. Instead of waiting around for them to mix them I went across the street to Fullworth where I bought two CR2032 batteries for my guitar tuner. I still can’t get over the fact that I can get two for $1.99 there.

            The perky cashier was chatting with the guy in front of me and she told him he was funny. He asked, “How do you mean, I’m funny?” and I thought they were going to repeat the famous scene between Joe Pesci and Ray Liotta in “Goodfellas”, but she just explained that he is always full of mischief whenever he comes into the store.

            Back at the drug store they still didn’t have my creams ready because they had needed to go downstairs to find the right size container. When the pharmacist that I hadn’t seen before handed me my bag he said, “That will be 40 cents.” I was surprised because I’d never had to pay before under the Ontario Works plan and I didn’t intend to this time. He said they would waive it this time. I wondered though if it was a new thing. He said that sometimes there’s just a few cents charge, but it was okay this time. As I was leaving, the other, more in charge pharmacist asked him what was going on. He told her about the fee and she told him, “Oh no, we never charge for that!” The she called after me, “Thanks for waiting!”