Every year, I make myself a promise to stay out of the grocery store the week of a holiday.  I can hardly handle the chaotic brou-ha-ha that goes on in every aisle…not to mention the long lines at the check-out counter.  I try to think how fortunate we are to be able to shop in such abundance when so much of the world is barely subsisting.  I try.  But, I can get just plain crabby in the crowds of all the other agitated people tromping and shoving their way into “celebration”.

So, the Friday before Thanksgiving I stopped in at the grocery store to get a jump on our little family feast.  Since I  only needed a few key ingredients to complete my list, I pushed my cart into the EXPRESS aisle.  You know the one….for fewer than 15 items?   This particular store had eight EXPRESS lanes, with a “holding” line feeding each register.  Everyone there seemed to have read my mind about getting ahead of the rush.  The store was bumper-car packed, inside and out.

I noticed a woman who was checking out ahead of me with a basket filled to the brim.  The woman behind ”Miss Basket-Running-Over”, turned around to me, first,  and shouted, “Would you look at HER……she has at least 18 items in her basket!”  Then she turned to Miss Basket and yelled, “Can YOU READ, lady?  Are you too stupid to count?”  “Who do YOU think YOU are—and when did YOU get to break all the rules?”  With that, she charged up to the check-out area and began loudly counting each item, as if she’d become the EXPRESS NAZI in an old Seinfeld episode.  Miss Basket just stood there sheepishly stunned, while I was silently giving thanks for her lack of rebuttal, as the blaring countdown continued. People, moving into position in other EXPRESS lanes were rubber-necking  to get a gander at this little dust-up. It came as a surprise to me when they began making their own grousing remarks, after assessing the situation.  Oh my, it wasn’t pretty.  The blended bitter voices were a chorus of gnarly discontent on its way to a loud crescendo.

Just as EXPRESS NAZI counted item  ”#22″……another voice rang out from the “long lanes” across the way.  This time, it was a check-out clerk,  yelling over the kerfluffle to the crowd.  “You PEOPLE…..Get a Grip!   Do you have any idea WHO is in MY line?”  Not waiting for an answer, she plunged ahead.  “This young man, (motioning to a dark-haired, twenty-something guy, clad in a Grateful Dead t-shirt, flip flops and sagging, black jeans) is leaving for Afghanistan in the morning!  Is THIS the way you want him to remember US?”  Good point.  Is this the way any of us want to remember “us”? 

Then, the crowd switched gears—-immediately errupting into applause for the young man, clutching 5 boxes of Supreme Pizza and two six-packs of beer to his chest.   Just think, he could be been in the EXPRESS lane.   As he scurried out, I wished he had taken me with him.  But, no.  I still had to endure the sighing wrath, of EXPRESS NAZI, who had completed her countdown, uninterrupted, as the checker spoke to the crowd.  Miss Basket-Running-Over,  made a trembling exit without ever opening her mouth.  EXPRESS NAZI, then gathered her own basket (holding 11 things) down at the register,  with such a vehement exhale, it could have easily blown the candles out on her 100th birthday cake.  I focused, eyes down,  on a bag of crushed, fresh cranberries trampled into a gooshy, red mess on the floor, wondering who might “slide into home” before I could get out of there.

The whole thing did not take more than  five minutes but it has come back to me in vivid detail,  ever since. First, how often do we break the “little rules”, thinking no one is looking or cares?  What if everyone lived that way? What kind of world would we be living in?  When we cut all  those little corners or call ourselves “pushing the envelope” just this once—could it actually be a way of being and doing that’s seemingly innocuous on its face but is actually indicative of an attitude, permeating all the ways in which we short-change ourselves?

Then, let’s look at EXPRESS NAZI.  When another person’s infractions become this big a deal……to someone else—–what’s up with that?  Sure, it can be annoying, especially when we are in a hurry and EXPRESS  becomes a misnomer, like FREEWAY at rush hour.  Most of us recognize this is NOT the end of the world in the big scheme of things.  What must have been going on in this woman’s  life, that the number of items in someone else’s  grocery cart could fuel such an outburst?  The tip of the iceberg?  Probably.  Maybe, this woman is the 24/7 caregiver of an elderly, incontinent parent with Alzheimer’s—-dealing with love and devotion and fury and frustration—-all at the same time, for months on end.  The transgressions occuring in the EXPRESS Lane just signaled her tipping point.  Her “straw”. Who knows?  There had to be a context. 

Thanks to the check-out person who stepped up, calling a halt to the whole nasty scenario.  She  demonstrated a kind of courage that most of us are too “politically correct” to become involved with these days.  It was an amazing act of supreme and extreme Customer Service!  The pin-ball machine of emotions pinging around the entire area—stopped.  And, here we were.  A collective of  adult strangers, supposedly preparing for a time of thanks.  Could this be a peek  into the kind of high-wire act we often experience with our own families, during an extended holiday?

So, let me challenge all of us for future times.  Holidays or not.

What if we were to look at every scenario as if we were in the shoes of someone else…..before making judgments and remarks off the top of our heads?  Maybe this year, instead of figuring out just how to exercise away all those calories, we could count the number of times we exercise compassion?  The calories will get digested within hours but the compassion we can show others will last a lifetime……in good memories and good will.  Instead of just stuffing our faces, maybe we could think about stuffing our lives………with compassion, empathy, and understanding.