Day 211
I am a slow learner. It’s not that I’m stupid (or at least I hope that that is not the case) … but just that I have a lot of things on my mind and it takes a while for certain things to seep down and well, register.
I was in Menards (kind of a cross between a Home Depot and a baby Walmart) today getting a variety of cleaning products and my 20 bags of mini bark nuggets (nuggets – I love that word! It’s so fun to say!) for the backyard and I was slowly pushing my cart through the pet aisles, looking for gravy for cats of all things, when a quasi-homeless looking man started up a conversation with me.
He started in by saying, “Who knew that a place like Menards would have cheap milk.” He went on to say he had comparison shopped at White Hen Pantry and 7-Eleven and those two places had much higher milk prices (well, duh – who buys anything at those stores … everything is higher!). In any case – he was going on and on about milk and groceries and how amazing it was that he could find what he needed here and I kind of cut him off (and in hindsight, probably on the too rude or obvious side) and scooted my cart away all the while thinking, “Get lost – you creepy weirdo.”
And I continued on my merry way.
Until about an hour ago when I was thinking other random thoughts and the man’s face popped back into my head and it suddenly occurred to me that maybe he wasn’t a creepy weirdo but just … LONELY.
Maybe I was the ONLY PERSON – other than the check out people (at this store and wherever else he had been or was going) that he might have a conversation with today.
Maybe he just needed to talk to someone. Maybe his dog had recently died. Maybe he was all by himself. All those maybes …
I suddenly felt really awful for dismissing him as a creepy weirdo and not really giving him any of my time … when maybe he was just wanting a little friendly conversation from a warm body … and I just happened to be at the end of the aisle slowly going along.
In any case, it made me think … how often have I done that? In the grocery store or other places? And, for that matter, how often have I been the one on the other end of things – the initiator of a conversation – just wanting to have a friendly chat with another warm body because the warm bodies at my house mew and bark – but they don’t hold a great conversation.
Loneliness is an odd thing. You can be in a room or building full of people and still be lonely. It makes you talk to yourself – and people you wouldn’t otherwise talk to.
It’s different from being alone. I don’t mind being alone – most of the time. But I don’t like feeling lonely. That emotion seeps into every fiber of your being and makes you feel hollow and empty.
So, I’ll throw an apology out to cyberspace and maybe it’ll find its way to the man I scooted away from … “I’m sorry I dismissed you, mister.”
And, I hope the next time someone starts up a conversation with me, I’ll remember today and the guy in Aisle 82B.