One Fucking Onion

You know how it is in supermarkets. You have only an armful of items, but the quick lane (1-8 items) has a line-up that would go around a block. So you look for a shorter line. And there it is! The customer’s cart is empty and she’s down to her last few items of food. So I scurried over, elbowing my way past the woman with a mountain of produce in her cart going in the same direction. Smugly I lay down my four carrots, my bag of onions and 3 bags of milk.  The woman ahead of me is down to her last onion. So, naturally I congratulate myself for being so fortunate. 

One single onion. She is explaining to the cashier in precise detail in which bin she found it and what the assigned price had been. The cashier’s name tag says “Mandy”. Mandy needs to know which button to push after she has weighed it. She scans the little roller with the codes and prices.

“It’s not a Spanish onion,” she says, as she squints down on the pathetic little onion.

“No,” it was in a separate bin, and it said 39 cents a pound.”

Mandy punched in under ‘yellow onion’ and the price showed 55 cents a pound.

“No, that’s not the right price,” the customer said.

Mandy tried under ‘Vidalia’ but the price was even higher.

“I don’t know what else to try,” Mandy said. “We’ll send someone over to check out the bin.”  She called out for a price-check over the loudspeaker. A woman named Samantha came over, examined the onion, listened to the lady who gave her detailed instructions on where to find its source. Samantha did not jog to her destination. Nor did she exactly crawl. Perhaps ‘sauntered’ would express her approximate speed.

“Patience,” I told myself. A skilled meditator could meditate on a crowded subway, I reminded myself. I meditated for maybe six seconds when an undeniable feeling of irritation came over me. “Patience,” I repeated.

In the eight or so minutes that followed, Mandy was careful not to make eye contact with me. I was dying to roll my eyes to express a tolerant, so far, exasperation,  but she looked straight ahead, motionless as if she were a part of an installation in a museum. Supermarkets in the Anthropocene ?

At long last Samantha returned and gave Mandy the code number she should use. Mandy punched it in and once again the price came out as 55 cents a pound.  The customer became animated, trying to communicate with her hands and elbows how she had found this one onion and how it had been clearly marked at 39 cents a pound.

It was at this point that I noticed that she was a rather short, stout woman, perhaps in her mid-thirties. I also noticed that her husband was standing at the other end of the counter looking bored. All the other items were clearly packed and ready to go. It was then, also, that I noticed the woman seemed to be enjoying herself. She actually looked happy, commanding Samantha and Mandy. She was urging Samantha to go back and look more carefully. The minutes were ticking by. Samantha hesitated, looked to Mandy and I could sense an argument brewing.  Somehow it was suggested that the customer herself should….  That was when something snapped inside me.

“Oh for God’s sake!” I said loudly, and brusquely gathered up my carrots, onions and milk in my arms.

I could actually feel the electricity as the customer snapped her attention to me. “Oh my!” she said loudly. “Aren’t we the impatient one! ”

“All this for one fucking onion!” I almost shouted.

“Well, the pennies might not mean much to you, but they do to me,” she said, yes, proudly.

Ah! She was playing the poverty card. My milk and carrots were not exactly luxury items. But, perhaps she had noticed that I was buying a whole bag of onions whereas she could afford only one. Who knows. I probably had more money than her, but then I was not that Kardashian woman either. (Or are there many of them?)

“”Yeah?” I snapped back. “ Well then, if I were in your shoes, I’d rather leave the onion out of the recipe than make someone wait for ten minutes!” I stomped off in a huff, and fortunately found another cashier who was not too busy.

God that felt good! I smiled all the way back to the car. There were so many worries waiting for me when I got home, so many chores to do. Lentil soup to cook, studio to clear out, dogs to walk, weeds to pull, emails to send…… And then there was the tricky feud with a prickly neighbour that had to be straightened out. But the venom in me had been spent....  resolving the argument would be a piece of cake. Shining love opened up before me.