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Entry tags:
On measurements of success
As a nineties kid I think I can consider myself "young" by the definition that I teach myself to navigate computer software by intuition and don't google "youtube" in order to watch videos. Using the self-service checkout is yet another adventure in using technology for the sake of technology to me, but I didn't become a rich miser by buying ready-cut salad unless its priced down because of short shelf-life.
Queing at the tills because the reduced price had to be entered manually, I was held up behind a bloke whose transaction involved two so specifically Scandinavian concepts that explaining them takes more time than it'd be worth. Between us, his things already out of his basket, was today's object of pity.
Maybe somewhere around fifty, he wasn't particularly badly dressed, but he was thin, his hair unkempt. He didn't look healthy. He'd bought two packages of ready-made pancakes, a bag of sugar, a few beers, two cans of what I think might've been some new-ish kind of what the Nordic countries, in some great semantic ignorance, calls "cider". Diagnosis: Probably a drunk.
My priced-down salad was for my own conscience, even after I opted for the pricier but leaner variety of ground beef that's going to give me cancer in the long run. I don't eat enough greens but getting salad for my pasta was at least a step in the right direction, the shame of buying ready-cut eased by it considerably less expensive and I'll have to eat it all today and that's good, right? But here was the man in front of me whose dinner was (seemingly) going to be ready-made pancakes, possibly not even with jam but just sugar, paying in cash -
- yes, paying with card is a basic social competence here. Even old people increasingly do it; if you pay with cash, it's usually a sign that you're technologically in the eighties, or that you haven't got a card at all, somehow. It's okay if you're eighty and make your weekly withdrawals from the bank. But for a man of fifty? The "social misfit" bells kept ringing.
It just struck me, then, that I was feeling sorry for this man who either didn't have a whisk, a bowl and a frying pan, or who just didn't know how to make pancakes; never learned, doesn't know that the internet is full of it, probably doesn't know enough English to understand a youtube cooking video. Here I was with my expensively healthy(er) ground beef and my conscience-driven ready-cut salad, feeling sorry for someone who had to buy his ready-made and not particularly nourishing pancakes. How pitiful, how sad. He paid with cash, what kind of home was he going home to for microwaving his limp and rubbery pancakes?
Seeing that I'd just read a novel about a teenager dealing with his terminally ill uncle, it didn't take me long to start wondering if maybe the guy was sick. Who am I to judge a cancer patient for eating rubbish comfort food? I mean, guy paid with cash, probably not. But he didn't look your typical drunk, and the amount of alcohol was a lot more modest than the hardcore lot I regularly served back when I sat at the tills in my hometown.
He chatted with the cashier, he seemed cheerful enough. By the time were were both bagging our purchases, I'd stopped feeling sorry for him. For whatever reason, I wanted to talk to him. Not have a big conversation or something, just make a cheerful comment about the pancakes maybe. Just letting him know that I'd seen him, that I'd paid that much attention during the three minutes we were both waiting on the guy who was doing who-knows-what about the tobacco dispenser. But how the hell do you come across as not judging someone for their dinner when you're demonstratively only buying a bag of salad? I mean, he probably wasn't having vague philosophical crises about how class can be read through our choice of dinner, but I felt guilty for it.
By the time I left, I was reassured that his life was probably totally fine, that he was probably happy eating his pancakes for dinner, that maybe he got two packages because he's got a girlfriend or something. Instead, I'd started wondering about the kind of pity I myself am facing from unspeaking friends and aquaintances, as someone who voluntarily has eaten my dinner alone the last fifteen years.
The idea that a family needs to eat dinner together isn't unique for right here, right now, as the anime from where my icon comes makes a heavy thematic point about. And it's not like I pity my dad, who has been cooking and eating his dinners alone for longer than I have; or my widowed aunt, or my grandma, or any of the many single ladies I know. But there's clearly something about being male, well into adulthood, and clearly not particularly well employed that made me think that his dinner must be sad and lonely. He looked like the typical demograph where solitude is not by choice. I don't think people pity me, but I started wondering if even if I'm not lonely now, I won't be when I'm sixty.
This non-episode was unusual enough for me to spend fourty minutes typing it up when I got home. If nothing else, this lack of ironic distance feels like it is a good thing.
Queing at the tills because the reduced price had to be entered manually, I was held up behind a bloke whose transaction involved two so specifically Scandinavian concepts that explaining them takes more time than it'd be worth. Between us, his things already out of his basket, was today's object of pity.
Maybe somewhere around fifty, he wasn't particularly badly dressed, but he was thin, his hair unkempt. He didn't look healthy. He'd bought two packages of ready-made pancakes, a bag of sugar, a few beers, two cans of what I think might've been some new-ish kind of what the Nordic countries, in some great semantic ignorance, calls "cider". Diagnosis: Probably a drunk.
My priced-down salad was for my own conscience, even after I opted for the pricier but leaner variety of ground beef that's going to give me cancer in the long run. I don't eat enough greens but getting salad for my pasta was at least a step in the right direction, the shame of buying ready-cut eased by it considerably less expensive and I'll have to eat it all today and that's good, right? But here was the man in front of me whose dinner was (seemingly) going to be ready-made pancakes, possibly not even with jam but just sugar, paying in cash -
- yes, paying with card is a basic social competence here. Even old people increasingly do it; if you pay with cash, it's usually a sign that you're technologically in the eighties, or that you haven't got a card at all, somehow. It's okay if you're eighty and make your weekly withdrawals from the bank. But for a man of fifty? The "social misfit" bells kept ringing.
It just struck me, then, that I was feeling sorry for this man who either didn't have a whisk, a bowl and a frying pan, or who just didn't know how to make pancakes; never learned, doesn't know that the internet is full of it, probably doesn't know enough English to understand a youtube cooking video. Here I was with my expensively healthy(er) ground beef and my conscience-driven ready-cut salad, feeling sorry for someone who had to buy his ready-made and not particularly nourishing pancakes. How pitiful, how sad. He paid with cash, what kind of home was he going home to for microwaving his limp and rubbery pancakes?
Seeing that I'd just read a novel about a teenager dealing with his terminally ill uncle, it didn't take me long to start wondering if maybe the guy was sick. Who am I to judge a cancer patient for eating rubbish comfort food? I mean, guy paid with cash, probably not. But he didn't look your typical drunk, and the amount of alcohol was a lot more modest than the hardcore lot I regularly served back when I sat at the tills in my hometown.
He chatted with the cashier, he seemed cheerful enough. By the time were were both bagging our purchases, I'd stopped feeling sorry for him. For whatever reason, I wanted to talk to him. Not have a big conversation or something, just make a cheerful comment about the pancakes maybe. Just letting him know that I'd seen him, that I'd paid that much attention during the three minutes we were both waiting on the guy who was doing who-knows-what about the tobacco dispenser. But how the hell do you come across as not judging someone for their dinner when you're demonstratively only buying a bag of salad? I mean, he probably wasn't having vague philosophical crises about how class can be read through our choice of dinner, but I felt guilty for it.
By the time I left, I was reassured that his life was probably totally fine, that he was probably happy eating his pancakes for dinner, that maybe he got two packages because he's got a girlfriend or something. Instead, I'd started wondering about the kind of pity I myself am facing from unspeaking friends and aquaintances, as someone who voluntarily has eaten my dinner alone the last fifteen years.
The idea that a family needs to eat dinner together isn't unique for right here, right now, as the anime from where my icon comes makes a heavy thematic point about. And it's not like I pity my dad, who has been cooking and eating his dinners alone for longer than I have; or my widowed aunt, or my grandma, or any of the many single ladies I know. But there's clearly something about being male, well into adulthood, and clearly not particularly well employed that made me think that his dinner must be sad and lonely. He looked like the typical demograph where solitude is not by choice. I don't think people pity me, but I started wondering if even if I'm not lonely now, I won't be when I'm sixty.
This non-episode was unusual enough for me to spend fourty minutes typing it up when I got home. If nothing else, this lack of ironic distance feels like it is a good thing.