Smarter Than the Average Stupid

            On Saturday morning my shin injury from getting doored on Wednesday night was bothering me before I got up and I was aware of it through yoga and song practice but didn’t notice it much by the time I left for the food bank. I was worried though that I would feel some backlash later from standing around for two hours.

            This was my first visit to the food bank since a couple of weeks before marijuana was legalized. I’d had a couple of essays to work on for my Romantic Literature course and in the two Saturdays between writing those assignments I had a cold.

            The line up was fairly long but that was normal for this time of the month. My place was just west of the steps of 1501 Queen where a very loud but friendly drunk guy of 40 or 50 in a leather jacket was sitting and continuously talking in long, slurred sentences. He wore glasses and had a receding hairline but lots of wild, uncombed short hair that stuck up in the air on top of his head.  His jeans were so big around the waist that when he sat his pants cleared his buttocks and though no flesh was exposed he was actually sitting on his long sweatshirt that was deeply tucked into the pants. When he stood he had to hold his jeans up with one hand. He had marks on his face that I couldn’t make out from where I was standing but it looked like he’d been in a fight recently. Every now and then he took a swig from a big bottle of golden brown liquid that was in his pocket. I couldn’t read the label.

            A guy with shopping cart from Dollarama that already had some cat food and kitty litter inside took the place behind me. He told me he wanted to go and sit inside and asked me if I would watch his stuff. It was ironic and a bit funny that he was worried about someone stealing a shopping cart that had been stolen from Dollarama. I told him that I wasn’t going to take responsibility for his stuff but I pointed out that marking the two spots in line ahead of me was one cart and one backpack, neither of which was being watched and neither of which had been stolen. In fact, I have never seen anyone steal anyone’s unattended cart in what has probably been a hundred times now that I’ve been in the food bank line-up. He just reminded me that he was behind me and took the cart inside to sit down with it.

            I wandered a little further west to avoid the smoke from nearby cigarettes and was greeted by the Polish man that I’d had conversations with the last two times I was at the food bank. The last time we’d talked he tried to tell me that Jews were to blame for the Russian Revolution. This time he started off by asking where I’d been. I explained that I’d had schoolwork to do. He wanted to know what I was studying and I said, “English”. “But you speak English already!” “English Literature”, I clarified. He told me he wants to move to Hamilton because Toronto is too expensive. He said he’s found a building where he wants to live in Hamilton with a Tim Horton’s and a park nearby and he’s on the waiting list for it with Ontario Housing. He’s been told that if he waits two more years till when he’s 65 it will speed up the process but he says he can’t wait that long. He’s changed his preferences from a specific floor to any floor and he’s hoping that will make things go faster.

            I applied for Ontario Housing twenty years ago so that we could have a bigger place when my daughter was seven and first moved in with me. We were offered a few places over the next fourteen years but we didn’t like them. She grew up and moved out six or seven years ago. I’m still on the list but I just keep my name there as a back up in case something happens to cause me to lose my place. Earlier this year they offered me a place in a well-known cockroach and crack tower on Dunn Avenue but I said I’d rather be homeless than live there.

            I pulled out my copy of the Norton Anthology of Romantic Literature and began re-reading William Blake’s "Book of Thel". It's a hard poem to figure out and people have been trying for centuries. I think it's meant to be a joke about people that are afraid of losing their virginity with a lesson in there that human sexuality is part of the overall cycle of life.

            I finished re-reading Percy Shelley’s Preface to Prometheus Unbound. One thing that stands out is that he mentions Satan as being the hero of Milton’s Paradise Lost.

            While I was reading, the drunken guy called over to ask what I was reading. I told him, “Romantic literature”. He said, “You’re smarter than the average stupid! I’m gonna read that book!” He came over to talk with me and once he was up close it was more obvious that he’d been in a fight. In fact, the reddish black marks looked more like he’d been repeatedly booted in the head rather than gotten punched. He repeated that I was “smarter than the average stupid” and declared that it’s good to know how to read. He told me that his cousin is in the band “Three Days Grace”; though if he dropped the name of the member he’s related to I didn’t pick it up. They’re from Peterborough though so maybe that’s his neck of the woods as well. He told me that someone had given him his motorcycle jacket last night while he was lying on the street. He said a guy put it on top of him and said, “This would look better on you!” He said he asked him “Why?” and he answered, “Because you look cold!” He told me, “People give me stuff because I talk to them!” He said, “I don’t do drugs, I just do alcohol … and I fight!” I commented, “It looks like you’ve been in a fight.” “Yeah, but I’m still standing!”

            When the food bank was about to let people in, we got in line and it began to rain a bit. The drunken guy was about six places ahead of me. He turned and said to me again, “I’m gonna read that book! I read “War and Peace” in two days!” “You read War and Peace in two days?” “Well, three days.” “That’s a very big book!” “I just read the first volume. There are seven volumes. It’s about a war that my grandfather fought in, World War One!” I said, “War and Peace is not about World War One. It’s about a war between Russia and France”. He said, “I know, but I’m talking about a book that I want to write!”

            He approached a middle-aged black-haired woman in glasses who was a few places ahead of him in line. She had been on the steps of 1501 Queen where the drunken guy had been sitting when I’d first arrived. At that time she’d seemed merely amusedly disgusted by his state. But now as he walked up to her in the line-up she turned to him and said, “Stay the fuck away from me or I’ll knock you out!” He politely moved back to his place in line.

            A short and possibly homeless woman that I’ve seen on the streets ever since I moved back to Parkdale 22 years ago came up to the drunken guy. He turned and asked the guy behind him if it was okay to let her in front of him. The guy behind him said that she wouldn’t just be in front of him but twenty people. The drunken guy told her that she’d have to go to the back of the line. The guy behind me with the stolen shopping cart suddenly spoke up to the doorperson, Martina and complained that the drunken guy has been bothering everybody in line and that he’s been drinking from a bottle of Fireball in his pocket and that he should be at the back of the line. I corrected the shopping cart guy that the drunken guy had been there before me. Martina told the drunken guy that she couldn’t let him downstairs because he wasn’t making any sense. She said she would get him a bag of milk if he wanted. She also spoke to the homeless woman and told her that she had to go to the back of the line. I think the homeless woman might be a francophone because Martina added, “Tu fait quelques choses.” It means, “You do something” so I don’t know what Martina was trying to communicate. The drunken guy went inside and came out a few minutes later with a small bag of food.

            I couldn’t understand why people were so annoyed by the drunken guy, since as drunks go he was not obnoxious. It almost seemed that people felt like they could be freely pissed off at him because he was less dangerous than other drunks.

            When I got downstairs, the regular volunteer at the reception desk was there with a skinny young man in glasses, who looked like he might be still in high school. They were watching with surprise a video and when I came up to the desk she explained that they were watching a video of the shopping crowds out for Black Friday in South Africa. I said, “I didn’t know they had Black Friday in South Africa. It’s barely even a thing in Canada!” The young guy was surprised when I told him that there was no Black Friday in Canada a few years ago. I think that 2008 was when Canadian stores first started having Black Friday sales because that year the Canadian dollar was at par in value with the US dollar and they wanted to keep Canadians spending on this side of the border.

            The young guy was surprised that South Africa would have Black Friday because he’d though it was a failed economy. I told him that South Africa is a very rich country, with diamond mines and gold mines. I guessed to myself that it was probably the richest or second richest country in Africa and I was right. Only Nigeria is richer in Africa and as a matter of comparison South Africa has more than twice the GDP of Israel.

            One of the volunteers at the shelves was a very tall and outgoing woman with short purple hair. I’ve seen her around the food bank before and she looks very familiar, though I can’t recall where I might have met her. She introduced the young man at the reception desk to someone as, “One of my children”.

            The guy behind me with the stolen shopping cart told the receptionists that he was shopping for five extra people who live at his house though he couldn’t prove it. The woman at the desk said she’d take his word for it this time but he’d have to bring their cards in next time. I was still waiting to shop but the guy behind me asked the purple haired woman if there was any kitty litter in the back. She went back to the warehouse and brought him some litter. He said to her, “I want you to serve me when it’s my turn because I like you!”

            At the top of the first set of shelves were small bags of “Kuna Pops”. They’re basically a puffed snack like cheese puffs but made with quinoa and chia. It’s a product of Ecuador by a company called Kunachia and “Kuna” means “welcome” in Quechua. I got three bags of three different flavours: spicy chilli, white cheddar and tomato and basil.

            Below those were bags containing about 25 restaurant portions of various jams and jellies. On the next sets of shelves I got a can of chickpeas, a tin of tuna and a can of Italian Wedding soup. The big score from the shelves though was a 500 ml bottle of extra virgin olive oil.

            At the dairy and meat station, Angie looked like she had a really bad cold. I turned down the lactose free milk, but I took the 650-gram container of cherry yogourt, a one-litre bottle of organic peach-mango smoothie and three small eggs. I didn’t want any frozen hot dogs or generic ground chicken. She offered me some hummus but then realized that what she had was some kind of tofu product. She gave me another bottle of the smoothie instead.

            They’d moved the bread section so that it was between Angie and Sylvia’s stations. I grabbed a bag of a dozen flat buns to take home and freeze.

            Sylvia offered me a choice between small or large potatoes. When it comes to food bank potatoes there’s a better chance that the larger spuds will be old or have bad parts, so I took a bag of about thirty little ones. She gave me three medium sized tomatoes that were in very good shape. She put three chubby broken carrots in my bag and it turned out that one of them had a rotten hole in it that left orange slime all over my bag. I got a small bunch of broccoli, two onions and a bag of blueberries.

            All in all it wasn’t a bad haul from the food bank this time, though the food was quite a bit more generic than the characters in the lineup.