Fewer than ten items

I stopped into the grocery store late tonight, after 10 p.m. The place was full of college student buying EVEN MORE BEER. The man in front of me, though, was my age, or close. He was in field clothes - jeans with muddy cuffs, boots, a cowboy hat. He smelled like earth. He looked tired.

He paid for his things with a WIC voucher, and it jammed in the register. The cashier, a young guy, fed it back through, and it gummed again. And again. The cashier asked for keys and did something. And we waited as he fed it through again.

The boys behind me were rhythmically knocking their suitcase of Bud cans against the candy stand and one was talking about how he saw a video of a six-month-old baby reading out loud. Can a baby possibly be, like, that super smart? he asked his friend. And our eyes met.

I smiled, We picked the wrong line.

He laughed and said we'd so totally get it back in good karma later that night and did anyone else hear that high-pitched noise? And his friend said, Oh, Dude. You are so high, dude.

The man was trying to buy two generic gallons of milk, two loaves of wheat bread, and several jugs of apple juice. The cashier admitted he had screwed up the WIC slip. The man nodded and, without saying anything or looking angry, just paid for one milk with the cash in his pocket. He helped place his other things in a cart to be put back on the shelves.

I watched all this, my brain ticking along furiously. I itched to help him. My chest was tight with it. I wanted to just lean over to the cashier and mutter, I'll get that, and buy the man and the kids waiting at home those simple staples. Milk. Bread. Eggs.

I saw something I could do that was simple and just right NOW. Dammit. I was trying to figure out how to do it, just do it, without embarrassing the man or smiling in a way which might lead him to think I felt beatific or smug, or make him confused or upset and how could I tell him that exactly three years and one and two-thirds months ago, my credit card was rejected and I had to hand back some milk and apples for my children and a bag of food for my dog at the same store? How could I say that in a few simple sentences and not make a scene and not make him feel like he owed me something?

I hesitated, over-thinking thinking thinking it, and the moment passed. So what if he thought I was just another guilt-ridden liberal? It would be about me, sure, but it could be about me as little as possible. So what if I stammered and did it badly, and did it baldly? And the stoned boys were annoyed or snickered as they watched?

I didn't have a way to help him anonymously and that's what the moment needed, or what I needed, and I was too stupid to think of anything else. And so the man took his single milk and left the other food to be put back on the shelves. And I wondered if his kids were asleep.

If you had been me, with that urge, what would you have done? Suppressed it? Shoved your credit card at the cashier? I really don't know how abnormal I might just be. Do you have urges like that, ones that might scare people off, ones that seem overly intimate, and overly involved? I donate money and things and time, so it isn't like that was my one, lost outlet. This was, what? Over-identification? Codependency? Middle class, liberal guilt?

I was next, and I paid for, I swear it, a basket full of white wine and red tulips.