Evasion in the Grocery Store

 

I was bopping through the grocery store the other day when I caught a glimpse of someone. She was masked, and it was a quick glance, so I certainly could have been mistaken. But it flashed into my brain that this was the former principal of my child’s grade school. I wheeled around. I headed the other way. I put as much distance between her and myself as I could.

Let’s think about this: My last child’s last day at that school was in May of 2003. This principal was already gone by then. Come to think of it, she was in charge when my older child was there, and his last day was in May or 1999. So it’s at least 20 years since our paths crossed.

Needless to say, I did not like nor admire this woman. She established herself as a petty tyrant when she started. She disgusted our group of working woman moms by saying once, during what was supposed to be a free exchange of brainstorming ideas, “That’s the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard.” She irritated the mucus out of me when she started driving a bright red Lexus to school. I know, I know: I’m the petty one here.

Throw a stone at me if I am the only person guilty of evading someone in the grocery store.

Most of the time for me it’s when I see someone who might be a tiny bit chatty and I don’t want to linger. Sometimes it’s a person I just don’t like very much. I can’t say I scamper away because I’m not looking my well-groomed best. I gave up on that long ago.

Once in a while, though, it’s someone like this former principal. Someone I REALLY did not like. Years ago, I had a female boss who lived in my neighborhood. I would run into her in the grocery store from time to time. I left the company because I figured out she was kind of a narcissistic psycho. To this day – and here we’re talking 35 years later – if I glimpse someone resembling her, I do an about-face and head for the opposite end of the store.

What does this say about me? I’ve admitted in former blogs to being petty. I also freely confess to impatient, irritable, disdainful, etc. etc. Pet sins, each and every one of these.

And yet, what’s to be gained by taking the chance on a face-to-face encounter? It’s not going to make me revise my feelings about said person. If I haven’t rethought my antipathy in 30 years, it’s not going to happen while we’re selecting oranges together. It’s not going to raise my esteem in the other person’s eyes. I suspect one of the reasons I didn’t get along with such a one is because he/she didn’t like me, either.

No; I don’t think character building would occur. And besides. I’m usually in way too much of a hurry to chat.

Decluttering: Part 1, Books

 

In the not-too-distant future, John and I will be downsizing. I get kind of jazzed thinking about moving to a lovely new smaller place. We haven’t actually started looking yet, but it won’t be long.

Meanwhile, I have committed myself to decluttering, or getting rid of stuff. Just arriving at the commitment stage has been a challenge. How many years have I been saying, “One of these days, I’m going to have to deal with all this…stuff.” The time is now.

My first foray a few weeks ago was books. TBH, dealing with books may be one of the biggest roadblocks to prudent decluttering. But I got a good start. I went through four rooms with bookcases and filled about 13 boxes with books. As I scanned the shelves, I tried to be ruthless. I’d ask myself, “Would I read this book again?" Or, since several books have never made it to my bedside reading table, “Am I really interested in reading this book--ever?” I reminded myself that most books are available in the public library. 

There were a few very old, sort-of interesting books. The old, hoarding me would think, “This might be valuable; I should hang on to it.” The new, enlightened me thinks, “Whether it’s valuable or not, I don’t have the time or energy to figure it out. Off to Half Price Books!”

I realized there were a lot of books I loved so much when I first read them that I thought I’d save them and read them again later. For decades that “later” meant “after I retire.” I’ve been more or less retired for a few years now, and I’m not any more motivated to re-read some of those old favorites than I was before. There are a few, but for most of them: Off to Half Price Books!

I came up with a new rubric for determining the fate of some of the books that were still on the shelves: “Are you worth packing up and dragging to a new home?” That was a very useful criterion for getting rid of a bunch of books.

And yet, there are tons of books I did not pack away that I have yet to deal with. I comfort myself by saying that I don’t have to deal with all of them right now. Not that I have any idea when I’ll be more motivated, unless the moving van is at the back door.

Thirteen boxes is nothing to sneeze at, although some of the books were so dusty that I did indeed sneeze a lot.

And, by the way, apparently some of those 13 boxes had some books of value. Altogether, we amassed about $100 from Half Price Books. By contrast, another two boxes of parenting books that we found in the garage only netted $1.97.