June 10, 2013

• Strange(r) Helping

  I must look a certain way. Like a service worker.

  
  My friend Rick forgot the iodine pills when we went camping. I guess we both forgot them, but I actually wasn’t familiar with the concept before he mentioned it, so I don’t feel too culpable. We stumbled across an enthusiastic dad camper who gave us some, but I ended up not wanting to drink water that looked orange, so I didn’t drink anything until we finished our hike back to a small town called Tuxedo. Tired from the day of hiking, we sat sweaty and famished in a small shop that was a cross between a Tim Hortons and a CVS Pharmacy. He drank coffee and I drank a Snapple as we sat in a booth and waited for our sandwiches.

  
  ‘Excuse me, where do you keep your Arizona iced tea?’

  
  Still dazed from hiking, I jumped a little when I heard this. A woman who had been scanning the drink refrigerators across from us had turned around and was staring straight at me. Wanting to convey that I didn’t work there, but also the information she wanted, I told her: ‘I didn’t see any.’

  
  She turned around again and continued to look. I looked at Rick and shrugged. My eyes wandered over to the refrigerators again a minute later and I spotted the Arizona iced tea. I pointed them out to her and she said ‘Oh, thanks’ and I muttered with a smile, ‘Glad I could help.’

  
  On her way back across our booth she realized, ‘Oh – do you not work here?’

  
  I was wearing street clothes and sitting in a booth drinking a product from the fridge. If I did work there, I was about to be fired.

  
  The previous Thursday I had been scanning the books in a thrift store. Sometimes I like to look at books I’m glad I’ll never read. It’s a rare feeling for me to have, so I pounce on it whenever I get the chance, which is basically in thrift stores or the dorm rooms of engineering students. At this point I was also in something of a reverie when a man asked loudly and resolutely, ‘Hey -is this a TV?’

  
  I looked over at the small black box with a wide front screen that was clearly an alarm clock. I went over and told him it was an alarm clock. He said, ‘But what about this screen? Maybe it’s a TV too.’ While it wasn’t that, I did realize that would be a great idea. Or at least something that other people would think is a great idea. I showed him the settings buttons and tried to assure him it wasn’t a TV until he plugged it in and nothing happened, and I realized it wasn’t an alarm clock or a TV. Like most things in thrift stores, it was just a relic.

  
  The third instance came a few days ago as I wandered away from my family at a Wal-Mart in Michigan. A Hispanic-looking woman came out of an aisle pushing a cart and asked me, ‘Do you know where MS-10 is?’ I looked at her completely surprised that anyone would ever buy something called MS-10. Was it possible she was injecting the weird growth hormones I always hear about into her own food? If there was a place that sold that kind of stuff, I guessed it would be Wal-Mart.

  
  I told her I didn’t work there; that’s when she told me MS-10 was a highway. I only just got into town myself, I said. She laughed kindly and went off.

  
  I mean, I guess I’ve spent my entire life trying to look like I’m someone who likes questions. So just like that zealous dad with no shirt and a headlamp (‘great foreheads think alike!’ he said to someone at his campsite), I’m a happy camper.

  • 2:26 pm
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