[Edits 5/8/15. Edit 5/12/15.]
There are a number of ways to
introduce this topic. I’ll stick with this:
Remember that song (if you’re
old enough) by Randy Newman, who later was a film scorer, called “Short People”?
It was a hit on the pop charts in 1977, and it was a satire of bias, with its
articulated ideas about short people’s having “no reason to live,” etc. Some
people at the time thought its lyrics were serious, but I knew it was a satire.
(Yet you didn’t have to be dopey to be fooled by it: a good friend of mine whom
I roomed with and wrote songs with, who was going to law school, said in about
1985 [or a few years later] that he’d thought in 1977 the song was serious in
its voiced bias.)
The point here: years later, on 60 Minutes (in the 1990s?), Randy
Newman, being interviewed by whomever, was asked if he had anything against short
people; this was asked (maybe slightly tongue-in-cheek) in the context of considering
the past outcry against the song. What he said was funny: he didn’t before the song….
I thought this was an
interesting measure of human nature—meaning, of average listeners to the song,
not of Randy Newman. A song that, to me at age 15, was clearly a satire was
taken as serious (its words taken at face value), and more than this, there was
so much outcry (which I didn’t really
remember from 1977), that it got to vexing Randy Newman, and on 60 Minutes he felt a good way of
discharging his feeling about this was implying that he did have something
against short people (he meant with irony), but only after the outcry against the song.
Well, something related can be
said about where I stand in recounting the following incident at a supermarket
today. This will be interesting in its own right, giving a snapshot of where
things are socially today (and believe me, I consider myself lucky in the sense
that I don’t have to worry about, if I had black skin, police shooting me on limited
pretext). But in recent weeks, I could have remarked about how
Italian-Americans behave from any number of angles, with the only editorial question
for me being how acerbic, or not, or how couched in careful language, I would
do it. (And this isn’t prompted by any news story out about New Jersey Governor
Chris Christie, who per the state’s main newspaper The Star-Ledger, seems to figuratively step in a pile of shit every
day.) But it seems not out of line to
make some general observations (not with pleasure in this) based on the
following incident.
##
I was with my mother at the
Shop-Rite (a chain-style supermarket, for those out of northern New Jersey) in
Franklin Borough, Sussex County, today, accompanying her on her weekly
food-shopping trip. This has become something of a tradition for us, and this
tradition started late last fall when she was uncertain about how well she
could get around following her feeling weak/uncertain on the heels of surgery
in October. I drive her down (about 25 minutes away), and first, I usually have
some errand of my own within the strip-mall area the Shop-Rite is the anchor
store for; then I join her to push her cart for her in the store while she
finishes up. I unload the groceries on the checkout conveyor belt (she has a
favorite cashier she uses), and bag the stuff after it’s been price-scanned. Since
she doesn’t have two working arms, I do basically all the “heavy-lifting.” All
pretty banal, not worth much recognition.
Actually, it can be a bit of a
tedious process. The whole trip is both something I willingly do with her (because, in part, it gives her a day out of
the house, well away from home) and have to “work” to be patient with (partly
given how I try to make my own “work weeks,” and how these trips have an
interrupting effect)—mind you, this mix of emotions and “agendas” is typical of
my dealings on her behalf, and I think it is neither strange/insincere or
freakish, given the everyday challenges (in the U.S.) of the many adult
children of more-senior-but-semi-disabled adults whom they care for.
For many weeks now, the shopping
trip has gotten rounded off by our eating lunch at a Burger King that is in the
immediate area and had gotten remodeled not long ago. The worst complaints I
have about this lunch include the fact that the food, for my preferences when
thinking of my heart health, seems not much better than the hospital breakfast
fare of “basic grease and carbs.” (But she pays for it, so….)
##
Anyway, this day, amid whatever very-minor
variations on this trip we had, I did a couple errands before I joined her in the
store. (Passing trivia: There was a group of people loading up a shopping cart
with a huge batch of groceries that, to judge from the ton of ground beef and
other lower-income-type food and the look of the people themselves, seemed to
be headed to a group home of some sort, or just a poor, rather large household.
My mother and I would comment on this group, confidentially, a few times.)
But the real issue of note is
when, as she waited on line for her favorite cashier, I decided to part with
her for a few minutes, and I knew I had time to pick up a tube of toothpaste
for myself, pay for it on a self-serve express line, put it in the car, and get
back to her before I had to be there to unload her cart.
I approached the set of
self-serve express checkout “kiosks.” There were/are about six of these (no
fewer than six), and they are (in Shop-Rite’s fashion, fairly similar to what
you see at an A&P) little setups with scanning devices, TV-monitor-like screens,
and contraptions for bagging. They are for one person to use at a time.
Several of them, at the moment,
were being used. There were a couple being operated by cashiers, such as for an
elderly man, which was a very atypical practice (for self-serve checkout kiosks) at any supermarket I’d ever patronized.
I wasn’t sure if, today, there was a line of waiting customers for all of these
kiosks; there didn’t seem to be, compared to what I’d seen for years at other
supermarkets I’d been at.
And one kiosk was unoccupied. I
headed to it. If anyone was on line, he or she would have gone to it.
And right away, some man, in
what could have been called the area of an apparent “line,” was commenting—I almost
didn’t quite hear him—about there being a line, or such, and that I was being “rude.”
I was surprised.
Almost as quickly, moving to the
side, he apparently went to another kiosk.
As it happened, he was leaving before I did, and I only
had one item, and I wasn’t slow processing it.
As he approached me (to walk
past), he grumbled, “Asshole!”
And that wasn’t enough: he
bumped into me very pointedly. (He had plenty of room to do otherwise.)
He had a “better half” with him,
a woman. They left basically together, but they were not walking close
together.
He looked in his forties; later thirties
at the youngest. I didn’t get a good look at his face. (He could well have been
judged to be “not from the local community.” I had never seen anyone at this
store act like this before.)
##
I was somewhat shaken. I said to
my mother a bit later, in reporting to her the incident when I first had the
chance (and, as happens in these situations, I kept my composure as I worked to
talk about it), that this sort of thing—being deliberately bumped into by
someone making a rude point—had happened “a few times” over the years. But
actually, the more I thought about it later, the more it seemed the last time I
really experienced that kind of pointedly being bumped into in public was in
1981, by someone who felt like a boulder bumping into me when I was in my
freshman year at GWU. This was, generally, when plenty of peers could be
decidedly rude, in various (usually less physical) ways.
Anyway (to return to the moments
just after the man had bumped me), I finished with my transaction and headed
outside. The man and his better half were walking across the parking lot to a fringe
area. If I could have seen what car he got into (which in fact I could not), I
might have seen if he was from out of state. It wouldn’t have shocked me if he
had a New York plate (meaning that, given the important clue of the rude
behavior, he was from a city area, not the relatively bucolic,
friendly-residents area of New York State near my home township).
I was mainly keeping to my
business as I took the toothpaste to the car, and put it in and returned to my
mother, hoping to be on time for her needs. I was.
##
I was feeling a bit chagrined, a
bit offended.
Another way I could have
introduced this anecdote was to say, “Do I have another story of being
humiliated in New Jersey (which generally seems to be the personal humiliation
capital of the world)?” Actually, I would suggest that I am not a fool to
suffer this kind of thing, nor do I feel I should be regarded as a goofus to report
these stories on my blogs. As I know from dealing with the issue of pointed
interpersonal rudeness at least since dealings with my freshman roommate Alan
L., whom I blogged about last fall, the big question in life is not “How can
you avoid being humiliated, whether by random strangers on the street or by
associates in some sort of honest, mutually serving work or other association?”
but “What do you do about it afterward,
if anything?”
I could sum myself as, over the
years, maybe being hit by a few too many trucks, metaphorically, but knowing
well what to do in the aftermath, such as (metaphorically again) getting the
license-plate number of the truck.
##
Anyway, when I talked to my
mother on the checkout line, while other women (of varying ages, most of them younger
than my mother) were standing around, within earshot, I talked in measure tones
about what happened. On one key point, I lowered my voice very discreetly: “I
think the guy was Italian,” by which of course I meant—and my mother understood—that
I was 99.9 percent sure he was this.
Lest this sound like I’m daring
to speak rudely, I think the following point needs to be made: I have known
Italian-Americans as friends, classmates, coworkers, good neighbors, and others
for many years, and every ethnic group, as we know, has good and bad members,
and no ethnic group has cornered the market on uncivilized behavior. But it
seems to me quite unambiguous, and I speak from experience (and all our
experience can vary), that no ethnic group in New Jersey has members—as do
Italian-Americans—that can speak vocally, if not quite loudly, to make a moral
point, but can in the same stroke
either contradict themselves with how they are making the point, or be so
pompous, licentious, rights-infringing, etc., that they decidedly erode the
moral standing they are presuming to speak from.
To review: This guy took umbrage
of my “cutting in line.” I wasn’t aware there was such a rigid line. But let’s
assume there was. What did he do next? He got to check out, and could leave
before I did. So maybe, not so bad I cut before him? But next he called me an asshole to my face—and that wasn’t enough. He
also bumped into me.
As I said, no other ethnic group….
And that isn’t a loose spouting of rhetoric; I am being quite serious, because
this sort of “going above and beyond normal bounds of civilized behavior, to
the point of almost comically-grotesquely undercutting their moral high ground”
has been done regarding me (and regarding others, of course) by
Italian-Americans in the support-group context (End note), in the workplace, and in other
ways.
##
Maybe the worst feature, or one
of the worst, of this situation was what happened next. I spoke about this
matter with my mother, in fairly low tones. But I could tell that I had enough “glowing
indignation” that other people within earshot, of a wide array of evident
backgrounds, were seemingly morally attuned to me, seeming as if “something was
up, something was wrong,” without their saying anything. Not that, by normal
moral standards, most of these people would have needed to do anything. (My
mother, herself, didn’t say much, as to suggest what to do to get some “redress”;
she seemed to get pensive after a while. This didn’t bother me; I knew if
anyone had to, and would, do anything on my behalf, it would be me.)
Maybe worst: The security guard
there, who was just a few feet away from me when the man cursed me and bumped
into me, didn’t do a thing. I referenced the guard when talking to my mother. I
saw him later, standing in his more normal spot, not far from the express
lines. He always seemed like a rather unimpressive country sort, like someone
who had been in the military and now was just working as a security guard for a
little money while retired. (I know something about this work angle: when I
worked for Wells Fargo Contract Guard Services—whatever it was called—in 1989-90,
they routinely sought ex-military people, I think in part because they knew
such people were attuned to, could live with, the work “ethos” of dealing with
boredom 90 percent of the time and being able to spring into dealing
competently with an emergency in the other 10 percent.)
Now, as I talked to my mother,
the security guard seemed aware of me in a new, slightly “chary” way, but
showed he was about as little apt to
get involved with anything untoward as the “cigar Indian” that he usually comported
himself as, there.
Mind you, this was a subtle
situation. I didn’t raise my voice. I didn’t spout some of the caustic things I
might have said (though I did remark in rather acerbic tones in line with this
first idea), “I would like not to have to come to this hick supermarket again!”
or, obviously more provocative, “[expletive deleted]!”
Now some of you might say, “Could
you have complained to the management, like at the customer service counter?”
Well, what would they have been able to do?
Would I have called the police?
For what purpose?—the man who’d bumped into me was gone. And it wasn’t a
full-fledged assault. I wasn’t wounded.
But like I said, the being
deliberately bumped into, for the man to make an emphatic point, was something
I really hadn’t felt since 1981 (though in 1981, there wasn’t an actual
explicit point being made other than I “had no right to be in the point of the
sidewalk where I was”). (Somewhat similar behavior from a coworker in 1996, in
a small cubicle, was in an overall-weird situation where the physical “bump”
was more a piece of a larger “pizza” that was problematic for different reasons
than being bumped by a stranger on the street.)
Are there any long-term lessons
we can derive from this?
My own favorite is just not to
go to that supermarket again. I almost never did anyway, for basically neutral
reasons and for years, before my mother started having me drive her down there
to help her do her shopping.
End note (added 5/8/15).
There are actually several examples in the support-group context, but my "favorite" is probably this: After he had been an uneasy ally of mine for a few months in spring 2002, a fellow support-group attendee who had aims of eventually running the group--yes, he was/is Italian-American--suddenly turned on me, for the long term, right after a feature story was done on the group (which I had arranged, and which this man had spoken approvingly of when it was "in process") in a county newspaper mid-year. He remained consistently and bitterly alienated from me--making increasingly accusatory or critical remarks to me (by e-mail), and this culminated in a "palace coup" situation in spring 2003 where I was removed from running the group (and my rising to this role had been almost by default anyway). This man, as a prime plank in his unseating me, charged me with violating group confidentiality by discussing another, sporadically attending person who hadn't come in months, via e-mail--which e-mail discussing had been with him, the charging attendee. The reason the third person, a female, was discussed with this man (in June 2002, I think) was some licentious instances of her behavior, and prior (April 2002) discussion about this woman (by phone) outside the group--between me and an elderly woman--had started at the behest of this elderly woman, who had run the group for about eight years and was considered a sort of saint for doing so by numerous others among group attendees. The irony about this man's charging me (in spring 2003) with violating confidentiality by e-mail--in such excoriating, uncompromising terms that made it seem as if there was no possible extenuating circumstance for doing so--is that he shared printouts or forwarded versions of my e-mails with yet another man, the latter of whom was the one who did the dirty work of ousting me from running the group. This sort of hypocrisy might seem drolly comical to you, but when you're the focus of it, put in hard, uncompromising terms and some heat of temper, along with some measure of your being financially gypped in the process, it is really not funny.
End note (added 5/8/15).
There are actually several examples in the support-group context, but my "favorite" is probably this: After he had been an uneasy ally of mine for a few months in spring 2002, a fellow support-group attendee who had aims of eventually running the group--yes, he was/is Italian-American--suddenly turned on me, for the long term, right after a feature story was done on the group (which I had arranged, and which this man had spoken approvingly of when it was "in process") in a county newspaper mid-year. He remained consistently and bitterly alienated from me--making increasingly accusatory or critical remarks to me (by e-mail), and this culminated in a "palace coup" situation in spring 2003 where I was removed from running the group (and my rising to this role had been almost by default anyway). This man, as a prime plank in his unseating me, charged me with violating group confidentiality by discussing another, sporadically attending person who hadn't come in months, via e-mail--which e-mail discussing had been with him, the charging attendee. The reason the third person, a female, was discussed with this man (in June 2002, I think) was some licentious instances of her behavior, and prior (April 2002) discussion about this woman (by phone) outside the group--between me and an elderly woman--had started at the behest of this elderly woman, who had run the group for about eight years and was considered a sort of saint for doing so by numerous others among group attendees. The irony about this man's charging me (in spring 2003) with violating confidentiality by e-mail--in such excoriating, uncompromising terms that made it seem as if there was no possible extenuating circumstance for doing so--is that he shared printouts or forwarded versions of my e-mails with yet another man, the latter of whom was the one who did the dirty work of ousting me from running the group. This sort of hypocrisy might seem drolly comical to you, but when you're the focus of it, put in hard, uncompromising terms and some heat of temper, along with some measure of your being financially gypped in the process, it is really not funny.
