Follow The Trail

After a long and desperate search for tortilla chips and finding none in any of the aisles where they should be, I admit defeat and resume shopping for the rest of my list, figuring I’ll stumble upon them eventually in my travels.

I’m grabbing eggs in the frigid dairy aisle when I hear a woman behind me say, “Put those back,” and turn to see a small boy with a disappointed look on his face carrying a bag of chips almost as big as he is. His cause lost, he trudges up the aisle, and, as discreetly as possible, I pursue him as he disappears around the corner.

I track him down one aisle further over, in the frozen foods section, with a slightly bigger girl I assume to be his sister, and she’s hoisting him up with both arms around his waist as he struggles to replace the chips back on the shelf far above his head.

Democracy is Hungry Work

We stand in seemingly endless lines snaking around the center of the elementary school gym, ringed with voting privacy screens and ballot scanners on the perimeter, waiting to cast our votes. The older woman in front of me motions to her husband, who is all the way back at the end of the line, to come forward in the line, but when he irritatedly waves her off she explains to me, “He teaches ethics, so he’s very careful not to cut corners and things like that.”

“Well, it was nice of you to offer to bring him up, but I appreciate that he’s got to do things his way,” I say diplomatically.

“Hell, I called him up ‘cause he’s got my cookie, and I want it,” she replies with a mischievous grin.

Shady Realtors

The internet said (on three different housing search platforms!) that there’s an apartment available for rent in our building, and we know, absolutely for sure, that there isn’t, so we gave the realtor a fake name and agreed to meet them to see what was up.

We left our apartment a few minutes early and walked up the block in the misting rain, then circled back around to find a small asian woman trying to figure out the front door to the building next door to ours.

After introducing herself and and telling us she was from the agency, she assured us that this was the correct address (not our building) and that the listing was just a typo, and after she got her key to work, she took us up to the apartment, only to have yet another problem with yet another key.

As she fumbled with the lock, a woman with a confused and slightly alarmed look on her face opened up the apartment door, and told us in no uncertain terms that she hadn’t been told anything about anyone coming by, and that the apartment was not for rent, and that no, we couldn’t come in to see it.

Judgey

“No,” I say forcefully.

“What do you mean, no?” Katie says looking from me to the avocado in question and back again, and then shoving it into my hands.

“Maybe,” I say grudgingly, then, “yeah, alright, it’s good.”

“You should apologize to me and the avocado,” she replies.

The 1%

Finally, after crawling around through the bushes and semi-wild forest undergrowth of the verge next the highway in Brooklyn for a while, I realize there’s no way I’m going to get this kitten to come to me, no matter how pitifully it cries. It’s just too scared of me, and there are too many good places to hide, so I untangle myself from the thickets with only minor injuries, jump back over the fence, and Katie and I regretfully continue on our way.

Later, we’re reminded of the wet, dirty, bedraggled kitten we caught sight of in flashes through the leaves, when our pampered, camera-ready, conditioned-to-being-fed-every-six-hours-or-so-no-matter-what cat begins to passionately cry out her distress because I am several minutes late in putting down a plate of food which has been lightly warmed in the microwave.

The cries are nearly identical.

Positively Bullying

The Austrian couple buying shirts is a study in contrasts: he is very friendly, and making entirely too much eye contact in a way that, were I not trying to sell him a shirt, would make me a little uncomfortable, while she, in keeping with many of the central European women I have encountered in my life, seems over it, “it” being everything, everyone, and every single attempt I have made so far to make her smile.

But the transaction has finally concluded to everyone’s satisfaction, it seems, and as I bag up his purchase his wife relaxes a little and idly examines the other offerings in the booth while her husband signs the screen. He then says, “I want to give you something.”

I demur, but grinning, he insists, and hands me a pen with what I presume is his name on it and the phrase “Greet every day with enthusiasm” written underneath, saying, “Because that’s what you have to do."

Good Game

The chubby gray squirrel squats beneath a fat, gnarled tree golden with fall leaves, and busily chomps away at an acorn, blissfully unaware of the black dog about thirty yards away from him. The dog moves slowly, deliberately, unblinking in his total concentration, never taking his eyes off of the squirrel, gently lifting each paw with care on each step, cautious to avoid startling his prey.

The crowd grows, watching anxiously while the squirrel, tired of nibbling, runs around the back of the tree, which causes the dog to abandon his strategy and dash around the tree, startling the squirrel into sudden realization of his eminent danger and sending him straight up the trunk to a high branch where he is at last safe from the snapping jaws of death.

The crowd laughs in relief, like we’d been holding our breath, as the dog runs back to his people, no longer a killing machine, but just a floppy black dog playing in the park, while the squirrel sits in the crook of a branch and screams tiny, enraged screams at its retreating back.