Uncynical Wednesdays: I’ll Be Your Mirror

I’m at the grocery store checkout lane and telling the bagboy ‘put it all in one bag, if you can.’ I don’t say that I’m not ninety years old and can carry more than one item at a time.

So he puts my five items (a quart of milk, a bag of arugula, a pint of cottage cheese, 3 tomatoes, and some Kielbasa) in one plastic bag, then puts that bag within a second plastic bag. He takes the double-bagged groceries and puts it within a third bag. He then takes the triple bag and puts it within a fourth bag.

He hands it to me and it’s so ridiculous I nearly ask him if he’s retarded, except that he actually is retarded—his wide-set eyes are looking at me and his misshapen mouth is in a half smile—so I imagine how badly that would go over. I suspect that his quadruple bagging is making fun of me, but I cannot prove this.

I leave the store carrying the well secured items.

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At work the next day, the administrative assistants are teasing one another and one of them says something halfway mean and giggles, saying, ‘I’m going to hell for saying that.’

Somehow they begin talking about hell and one of them says, ‘some people believe that in hell you can’t do whatever you enjoyed on earth.’

I get up and walk around my desk to shut my office door. On the way back to my chair, I think that some people’s hell is a place filled with intelligent, attractive hard workers who are stylish and well mannered.

Hell is other people, indeed.