Thank You, Kind Stranger

Everyone’s upbringing is different. Different highs and lows, different memories, and different outcomes. Despite very similar, universal feelings that we all feel during childhood and our coming of age, no two upbringings are the same. These universal feelings that help us bond with each other, connect with art, and have empathy for those around us, still don’t equate what we went through.

We may know what someone means, or how they feel, but we have not walked in their shoes. They have not walked in ours. Even two people who grew up in the same house lived different lives; they reacted to their circumstances in different ways, and each became part of the other’s circumstance, for better or worse. Better, I hope, or at least that you have worked through the worse.

As for this hobbyist writer’s upbringing, I had some unique highs and lows. I suppose that, per the first two paragraphs of this entry, calling my upbringing “unique” is redundant. Let’s try this again.

Like anyone else, my upbringing came with magnificent highs and imperfect lows. Some of those highs are a matter of perspective. When we go through our childhood, everything is new and fun and amazing to us. When we look back on it, we often remember the way we felt more than we remember each specific circumstance.

As my brother pointed out to me recently, we grew up in our parents’ hometown, and we went to school next to our church on a hill. There is something idyllic and poetic about all of that. Of course, that hometown was Parma, Ohio, and our church’s hill was State Road hill, famed for the State Road Stumble bar crawl – which is idyllic and poetic in its own way.

We had a happy life: A backyard with a forest and a creek, friends and family near us in all directions, and memories that draw a smile. There were also memories that draw something less than a smile when I look back on them. Nothing in life is perfect, and you can’t have happy highs without lamenting lows.

The outcome of some of those lows, for me, was an increased responsibility at a younger age than some other people I knew. I started doing my own laundry around middle school. This was also around the time I started to learn how to cook my own dinner, pack my own lunch. I was asked to do chores and errands that I knew not every kid my age was asked to do.

In truth and hindsight, I am grateful for those things now. Laundry and other chores around the house don’t bother me now, they can honestly be kind of fun. Cooking has gone from a necessity to another hobby of mine: Experimenting without recipes, caring for the quality of both my ingredients and the method I mix them together, and having fun in the kitchen with a song and a drink. If something needs to be done, I don’t mind being the one to do it. When you give a kid responsibility, they grow up to be responsible.

As I grew older, I hit that sweet sixteen milestone that the kids in America dream of: I got my driver’s license and a car. Her name was Baby Blue, and she was a 1993 Plymouth Voyager. Go look up pictures of that make and model, she was a beauty.

She had one sliding door on the passenger side, because in 1993 you did not need two sliding doors on a minivan. Kids these days have it too easy. That one sliding door also had a key broken inside of it, so if you knew the trick, anyone could unlock it. That trick came in handy once or twice when I locked my own keys in the car mid-winter. Baby Blue had racing stripes down each side of her; totally unnecessary, yet I am glad they were there. She was one of a kind at the Parma Senior High School parking lot, and she was mine.

With Baby Blue came a lot of fun. Driving my friends around when we would hang out, going places without having to ask mommy and daddy, and getting into some shenanigans that were previously unavailable to us. Some of those shenanigans led to some trouble, which was a lot less fun, but I blame myself for that. I would never blame Baby Blue. May she rest in paradise.

With Baby Blue also came more responsibility, which was part of the whole deal in my family. Giving family members a ride when needed, helping move things or drop them off from time to time, and regularly doing the grocery shopping for the house. One thing about a minivan like mine was she could hold a lot of groceries.

One of the first times I went to the grocery store on my own, with a list written by my mom, I thought I had it all down. What could be so hard about putting food in a cart, walking that cart down a few aisles, helping to pack it into bags, loading up Baby Blue, then carrying it all in the house? I had tagged along on more grocery trips than I could count, surely I could do it alone.

I was wrong. Oh boy, grocery shopping sucks.

How are we supposed to remember where everything is? Why do they keep moving things out of their old spot to a new spot? What about when your list is written out of order and you have to go all the way back across the store to get something you missed? What about when you have gone up and down the same aisle five times and can’t find the thing that is supposed to be there? What about when you don’t even know what the thing you’re looking for is supposed to look like?

Why are there so many brands of everything? Which ones are better quality and which ones are just expensive for the name brand? Which ingredients are bad for you? A better question, which ingredients aren’t bad for you? Why are all of the sections positioned where they are? Why do some random foods not seem to belong in the aisle they are in? Why are there so many advertisements around the store when I am clearly already giving them my money?

Why do we even have whole stores full of food that’s packaged in wasteful material? Why do we stock these shelves so much that we can’t possibly eat all this food, and much of it too will go to waste? Why are we okay with this wasteful system of food when people are starving twenty minutes away from us?

We used to all be farmers. We used to grow our own crops and raise our own animals and trade with our neighbors when we wanted something different. We got fresh air every time we had to get more food. We didn’t have to worry about ingredients being bad for us. We didn’t need a list. We didn’t get lost in the aisles of waste and unnecessarily overstocked shelves of too many brands. There’s no needless advertising in your own yard.

What have we done to ourselves? We could still be out there tending our own land, growing our own food, and relaxing under our own shady trees after a day of good labor in the sun. Instead, we wake up too early to go do a job that doesn’t matter to make money that we give back to our corporate overlords while we are too tired to make healthy choices, and we repeat this doom cycle until we become too exhausted to revolt and one day we just fucking die, and our friends and family have to worry about whether they can get the time off work to even grieve us properly. What have we done?

Dear reader, my sincerest apologies, I have gotten far away from the point.

Happy article! Fun memories! HoneyBear!

So I was on this trip in the grocery store, the first one ever on my own. I was doing okay, but I was a bit stressed trying to get everything together in an appropriate amount of time. Next on the list was a dozen eggs. Easy, you can’t miss the eggs. So I grab a carton of eggs, put them in the top section of the cart with the bread and other delicate items, and I go about my way.

“You should check those eggs,” a strange voice called out to me.

I turned around and saw an old man, his own shopping cart less full than mine. He was by the eggs, almost right where I was just standing a moment ago. I looked at him confused, like, what do you mean check the eggs? Are they not eggs? What the heck else is in this little carton?

So he demonstrated for me: He picked up a carton of eggs, opened it up, and looked inside. He then closed the carton and put it down in his cart. He motioned at me to do the same. Uh, okay? I pick up my own carton of eggs and open it up. Sure enough, a couple of the eggs were cracked. That crazy son of a bitch was right: I had to check the eggs.

I’m pretty sure I didn’t even say thank you. I just laughed and smiled at him. He smiled back at me, gave me a wink or a thumbs up, and he walked away as I switched for another carton of eggs, which I promptly checked.

This happened more than ten years ago, and I am telling you the truth: I think about this kind old man often. I think about him not just when I am checking a carton of eggs, I think about him not just when I walk into a grocery store, but today I thought about him as I was driving with a daydream.

I often will think of him unprovoked. I think about what a simple, good lesson he taught me. Check your eggs.

It makes me think about what he must have seen in that moment: A teenager, stressfully looking over a list he didn’t write, clearly not equipped to handle such a simple errand as purchasing food, in a hurry to fill his cart and get back home. Maybe he looked at me and he saw himself, years ago, on the first shopping trip of his own. Maybe he remembered a time he didn’t check the eggs and came home with disappointment as some fresh food had to be thrown in the trash. Maybe he remembered a time that another kind stranger taught him the same lesson that he saw me in need of, and decided to finally pay it forward. Maybe he looked at me and saw a son or a grandson in need of guidance, and he stepped in to give it on behalf of dads and grandpas everywhere.

I think about him every time I have the chance to be nice. I have not had the chance to pay forward this specific act of kindness, but I always make sure to look around me when I am buying a carton of eggs just in case.

I have had the chance to reach for something that someone was not tall enough to grab. I have had the chance to help an old woman find her car in a sea of seemingly similar sedans. I have had the chance to overhear a conversation about movies, and happen to know the answer to their debate of who played who in a certain blockbuster.

I have been blessed with so many chances to be nice, and I try my best to take those chances when they’re given to me. A lot of the time I do, I think of that kind old man who helped me. He helped me without being asked to, simply because he saw someone who needed help, even though I didn’t realize I did.

I don’t think I told him thank you that day, but I wish I could now. I wish I knew his name, and a little bit more about his story. Whoever raised him raised someone helpful, willing to step out of his comfort zone and guide a young man with a little lesson he would never forget. Maybe he became a helpful person in spite of an unhelpful upbringing, which is an even more triumphant outcome than a nice person coming from nice parents. Whatever highs and lows he experienced, he came out of them all a good man.

I hope he had a happy life. I hope he had kids and grandkids to teach similar lessons. I hope he had someone at home to share some of those groceries with. I hope he had hobbies and a community and a place he knew he belonged. And if he didn’t have any of that, I hope he had someone kind enough to help him through it.

Wherever he is now, whether our own world or the next, I wish I could thank him. But I can’t. I will likely never see him again, and even if I did, we most certainly would not recognize each other in passing.

I can’t thank him, but I can pay it forward. I can help those around me, and I can help strangers. I can teach a little lesson without acting high and mighty, and just wink and walk away when my work is done. I can help when I am asked to help, and I can offer help without being asked. I can do all of that with a smile on my face and some love in my heart. If I can do all of that, that is how I can thank him.

Thank you, kind stranger. I have checked every carton of eggs, and I have thought fondly of you every time I did.