4 Days To Spare

 Finally a "yes" out of the mouth of a Walmart associate...

 

Tuesday afternoon, I lugged the box containing the speakers that didn't work, down the halls and out the door of Sacred Heart.

It is probably only about 35 pounds, but is a long rectangular box that is hard to balance and carry at the same time.

When I got to the lobby, Donna the security lady jokingly asked me if I was sneaking someone in and out of the building using the box, because of its long rectangular shape.

"That's funny, because the last time I went out into public with it, I would mess with people by putting my mouth near the top flap and half-whispering: 'Stay quiet, and don't wiggile around so much, we're almost there. When we get to Auntie's you can come out!' and stuff like that to the box."

"Doesn't Jacob have a car anymore?" she asked.

"He's battling some kind of depression or something, and I don't have it in me right now to try to stay sober enough to be of any help to anyone in that regard." I said.

I am a believer that if I drift off course, or "away from God" in my own life, then it will have a global effect and everything in my world will suffer.

I joked about the whole pandemic having come about just because I hadn't been able to embark upon a period of fasting and cleansing and meditating, and strengthening the things that remain, as a certain scripture advises. I felt that it was the right time for me to go on a 3 day apple juice diet, followed by a period of water-only fasting; but kept putting it off.

Then, a week later, the pandemic was in full swing, and I found myself advised to stay in my room, and then the apples started appearing.

The residents of Sacred Heart began getting meals at different food bank locations and leaving the apples that came with them, at the front desk, in case anyone else wanted them.

     So things kind of fell into place that way and next couple weeks might have been a great opportunity for spiritual growth for me.

But, then the pandemic unemployment assistance check came; and Bob Caravajal made the statement: "The worst thing you can give an addict is money!" which became kind of prophetic as the bottles of wine with the evening meals began, and I began to see the world around me start to dissolve into chaos.

It seemed like, as an alternative to the path showing me "a way out" through apple juice fasting and spiritual growth, there was also this other one, involving becoming an alcoholic and drug addict, which was equally available and could even be seen as the wide path, or the road frequently traveled...

So, yeah, I could just drink and drug my money away like the other 90% of Sacred Heart residents, or I could use it to do things like buying the new set of speakers, which could improve my daily life indefinitely. Definitely long after any drug high may have worn off.

I told Donna that I was only cautiously optimistic about being able to return the speakers and have the $124 put back on my U.S. Bank pandemic assistance card.

I started to outline the various things that could go wrong:

The street car not running that day for some reason. The street car driver not allowing me onto the car with the box ("We can't allow any boxes onto the car; because of the virus..." type of thing).

"No, I've seen ladies bringing big strollers onto the things; which just barely fit through the door..." Donna said.

"Then, when I get there, the computers could be down, or the store could be closing early because of a pipe bursting or something; or the only associate authorized to do returns on items just went home sick, come back tomorrow, type of thing.."

Donna laughed at my pessimism.

It was none of the above, after I got to the "Chef Street" Walmart, located in the ghetto area of Gentilly.

It was that they were out of "shipping labels."

"We can't do returns because we don't have any shipping labels; we ordered them but we're still waiting for them," said the young black lady, who seemed to be relishing the opportunity to deny a white man.

She told me that I could print out the label on my computer and bring it to Fed Ex myself (so someone like her wouldn't have to do a thing). Or I could just hop in my car and go to another Walmart.

"I guess I could call first to see if they have shipping labels," I said, which got no response from her other than staring at me with her mouth slightly open, as if she was at a loss for words.

By this time, the black people who had gotten in line behind me began to fidget and become rude, which is par for the course at any of the Walmart locations in black areas. I wouldn't doubt that white people know enough to just not go to these stores, as I often find that I'm the only white guy there when I go to them.

Joe Biden might have been right about Latino people being "incredibly diverse" in comparison to black people, whom he suggested mostly all thought "the same."

And so that little vignette played out. After the girl told me that they didn't have any labels and then took up the posture of staring at me as if for a loss for words, except for saying "I don't know" to any questions that I posed.

"If I print out a label to ship it myself, I'll probably have to pay like thirty bucks just to get my $124 refunded..."

"I don't know..."

Diversity Galore

 

I set the box down next to a bunch of other stuff that was along the wall and was about to ask if I could leave it there while I shopped but she was able to find her voice and said "You can't leave it there; you have to take it with you!" scoring a point for herself and her race, I suppose.

Of course, one of the random blacks in line had to echo the sentiment: "You can't leave it there, you gotta take it with you!" as if by not knowing that, I had no sense at all. That is the "piling on" that I have experienced before when I was the only white guy in the immediate area. 

One time, I put the wrong PIN number in the machine at Rouses Market and the black cashier had to push a reset button, which she did, but not before heaving a huge sigh, as if I was just ruining her day. A sigh which seemed to signal the couple of blacks in line behind me to launch into "Man, I'm in a hurry, I ain't got time for this s***!" and such things designed, I suppose to try to ratchet up whatever anxiety I may have had over having punched in the wrong PIN number.

They know that you are flustered and so they try to pile on, hoping to anger the white person so that the white person might say something that will get them barred from the business, creating a great inconvenience for them, perhaps.

So, that whole thing played out, just like at the Gretna location, almost word for word; as if they had rehearsed it. Or as if they all think the same.

"The Metarie store let me keep it there while I did my shopping."

So, I put the huge box in a cart and pushed it around while I did some shopping so that the trip wouldn't be a total waste of time. It became a target for at least a dozen of "them" to suddenly need to get to somewhere right behind my cart as soon as they saw it.

"Ess-cuse me, I need to get there" I was told a few times after I parked the cart anywhere in the store." One employee grabbed a floor jack that had been just sitting there and needed me to move the cart yet again. "Ess-cuse me I need to get by there!" After I returned to that aisle a few minutes later, I saw that the jack had indeed been moved, then abandoned, in another spot kind of near where my cart had been parked.

"You gotta be kidding me," said Donna the security lady after I came in, still toting the box.

"I told you I was prepared to have to lug the thing all the way there and back, and am not surprised.."

So, this afternoon I called the Tchoupitoulous location, and a Creole sounding lady told me "Yes, we have shipping labels" in a voice that suggested that she actually understood my question and knew what I was trying to do.

I guess this is where the whites shop...

I still have 4 days left to be able to return the speakers.