The other night I made fish tacos for Mel. We had gotten the cod at my favorite fish place, Jensen Brothers, after a culturally enriching afternoon downtown at the Dunedin Art Festival. Before the meal we were enjoying a dirty martini and I was telling her about my interaction with the bag girl at Publix where I had stopped earlier to get the remaining ingredients for our dinner.
“Oh no. You didn’t do your spiel,” Mel says rolling her eyes.
Yes, I did do my spiel!
If you have ever met me you know that one of my tender toxic traits is telling unsuspecting grocery cashiers about the time when I was a cashier at Publix, how it was the best job I’ve ever had, followed by numerous reasons shopping is a pleasure (see this old News from the South for further resourcing).
Sunday was no different. There I was in the checkout line with the aforementioned fish taco ingredients and also:
a New York Times
organic free range non-GMO eggs
a charcoal sheet face mask
lime sparkling water
carpet cleaner
a pre-batched turmeric shot
Irish Spring bar soap
Jared was the cashier, tan and shaggy-haired, cracking jokes with another teen employee on his way to do callbacks. My bagger was Fiona (I’ve blanked on her real name due to the emotional avalanche about to ensue).
Blissfully ignoring the lady posturing behind me in line, I tell Fiona that working at Publix was the best job I’ve ever had, adding that I’m 42. You know, just to give her some context of how many other jobs cannot and absolutely will not compare.
Fiona replied, “Would you believe me if I told you this was my second week? I’m 16.”
Clutching my pearls, I started to cry on the spot.
Some will say it’s hormones. Some will say it’s my underlying grief over not leaving a legacy via children of my own. It could merely be the fact I saw myself in Fiona — immediately transported back to simpler times, compression leggings under my pressed uniform polyester pants, getting asked to prom after my shift in the parking lot, a lady spitting out her dentures on my conveyor belt, my co-worker crush (not the same as my prom date), I believe we dubbed “bag boy.”
Whatever it was Jared still wasn’t paying attention, the lady behind me now bulldozing around me with her cart (in the 10-items-or less lane I might add), and I was choked up. I quickly told Fiona she’s going to love it, and made my way to customer service to buy one Powerball ticket and one Mega Mills ticket.
Walking into the humid parking lot, I giggled to/at myself thinking of how much life I’ve lived, how many teens I’ve told that spiel to, wondering if anything can be as pure as the grocery industry. I unlock my truck and wouldn’t you know right across from me is one of those cube-looking cars with a diamond-rimmed vanity plate that reads ICU2QT.
WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN!
I’m currently reading Liz Tran’s The Karma of Success: Spiritual Strategies to Free Your Inner Genius. Like many of these self-betterment books it’s all about the act of noticing, about having enough solitude and “blank time” as I like to call it to let your intuition show you the path already laid out for you. I am not talking about a quiet walk on the weekends, I am talking about a lot of alone time. The idea is that your body/mind will give you little hints as to what Genius You is trying to say through stuff like extreme emotional responses in the checkout line, or say, vanity license plates. You just have to be aware enough, not distracted enough, outside enough from your own ego but also inside enough in your own mind to see.
Is my destiny to be a grocery chain manager eventually rising to the top unseating Publix’s owner who has been rumored/confirmed to be a right-wing conservative mega donor who possibly funded the insurrection?
Upon more thought and more solitude, I realize grocery stores are a thru-line in my own life. We’ve got my Aunt Barbie and Uncle Dave’s Gilmington Iron Works shop “The General Store.” We’ve got Otto’s. We’ve got Jack’s Juice Bar that hangs in my dining room painted by my best friend’s mom, the first health food store to open in South Florida in 1949. And revealed by Mel for the first time Sunday night, we’ve got a grocery store that my great grandparents owned which I NEVER KNEW ABOUT UNTIL RECOUNTING THIS STORY, of which the BELL that people used to ring for service has been sitting in Mel’s laundry room right under my nose MY ENTIRE LIFE.
A lot of my friends that are around my same age are reexamining what we’re even doing with our lives. Not so much how we’re making money — which is of course a very obnoxious, necessary part of the day for most of us — but how we are contributing to a greater alleged good. How are we “in service” or giving back to the community? To the land? And thus to ourselves.
There are the obvious contributions to the world I think people sometimes convince themselves are moving the needle — writing your congressman, having a kid (could be debated, tbh), charitable giving, not using plastic utensils, organized religion. But what about acts not as tangible? Acts not as prescribed? Consistently showing up as someone’s cashier, maybe the only person they see that day. Packing a reusable tote with such efficiency the satisfaction lasts for days (hi Virgos, ICU2QT).
It’s too soon in the fiscal year to tell if my money-making schemes logged in my personal Google Sheets “abundance tracker” are going to pan out to support this snowbird double-mortgage (rent Oak Hill Estate!) absolutely luxurious and blessed lifestyle. But if not — and maybe even if so — catch me fulfilling my life path at Publix. Crying, shepherding the next generation with kindness, and making a dollar extra on Sundays.