Oranges, Batteries, Tires, Advance and Madea.

 

     There are only three times (way too many)  in my life that I've seen my elders mistreated in a retail environment.  Once, I witnessed a wise mouth teen ( that absolutely smelled rancid) like teen spirit tell Preacher Bingham (in his later years) if he wanted different oranges, he'd have to walk on his own to get them from the cash register to the produce department because she just didn't have time.  In a humble tone, Preacher Bingham apologized for the inconvenience he had caused her because he had picked up the wrong oranges and he couldn't take the wrong oranges to his wife.  That humble man left the oranges lie on the counter and slowly left the store.

      Most of the time my Bebe genes are the dominant trait, but there are those precious moments when Big D  sneaks out of my pores despite my best effort to the alternative.  A big orange challenge was about to begin the likes of which Neyland Stadium had never seen.  I let Preacher Bingham make it safely to his car where Mrs. Mae was waiting, and at that opportune time, I took it upon myself as an educator to share a thought or two with freckled face, snaggle toothed Miss Priss behind the counter about the man she had just dismissed and the oranges I would happily wait for her to retrieve...in a buggy...full...every type they had in the store....big....small....cuties....if it was orange and citrus, her quickly moving feet better get them to me and get them quick.

    When I didn't wiggle, and I didn't raise my voice, she simply closed the line, took a buggy, and came back with enough citrus to provide vitamin C to the whole neighborhood surrounding Binghamtown Baptist Church.  She was appalled that I cared and interrupted her ever so important task of chomping gum like a calf chewing on  a cud.

     In my departure, I tried to channel Dixie Carter from Designing Women, and I simply said calmly to her, "Do your homework, child.  Do your homework.  Not only will streets in this town be named for that man but streets of gold in Heaven will be named for him, too.  If he comes in this store and wants oranges, you get him oranges.  If he wants gold, frankincense and myrrh, you get those, too, because he is serving a King that I don't think you've ever met or you'd know to respect the prophets God has sent to you for a reason."

    I was so proud I didn't cuss her like a sailor; that doesn't mean I didn't want to.   I carefully placed the oranges in my car, delivered them and I asked someone to deliver them to the church (where I am not a member) the next day.  Mission accomplished.

    Now, let's forward about 20 years later.  This time I'm pissed.  Sorry, Mom.  I'm pissed.  Last month, Mom's handy dandy Cadillac needed a little spa day.  The Cadillac that transported us to Gulf Shores for a vacation after Dad lost his battle to colon cancer.  The Cadillac that could drive to East Cumberland Avenue Baptist Church on auto pilot.  The Cadillac that could wiggle its way in Conley's and get a chili bun all by itself.  The Cadillac that got her ...most importantly...to the beauty shop.  The Cadillac that we all need to be thankful cannot speak or tell tales.

     It had been waxed, but we gave it a little spa treatment at Soapy J's.  After that, we decided it needed a new battery.  So, we cruised ever so smoothly to Advance Auto Parts in Middlesboro simply because of proximity and my late husband's employment history with the franchise.  Mom and I walked in, and we were invisible.  People with weekend warrior kits of cleaning supplies and tacky little air fresheners' needs were put before ours.  Patiently in her little pink cardigan set with pearls and matching purse in tow she waited while I circled like a shark ready to raise my fin.   After about 20 minutes, some male species asked what we needed to which we replied a battery.

     Cadillac has a new wax and shine and it might as well get a new battery, too.  Oh, the look of angst on this young male's face to consider the task before him.  He may actually have to install a battery today.  A fate worse than death; I'm sure.  He grunted and groaned until he got the battery loaded on the cart, had the audacity to ask if we expected him to install it.  I was thinking, "either you will install this in this car or I will install it in your ....I won't say it." And as we faced the door to go outside, a tire had gone flat on the Cadillac while we were in the store.

    That was the breaking point.

     I asked the grunter if he had an air compressor (not sure if he understood the term), and he quickly said, "No," with an echo from some other person standing behind the counter giving the impression of being able to make a decision while sporting a tragic hair style, too.

     I knew there was a compressor in that store.  I could have bought one, used it, and then demanded a refund.  But, I had to pick the debate I would launch carefully because Mom had reached a limit of patience, and I passed it up when the grunt started grunting.

    Not once did they offer a can of Fix a Flat.  Not once did they offer to get us someone who could help.  Not once did they even act like we had a problem that was any of their concern.  

    And then I started thinking about that list.  That list of young people who would come get my momma's Cadillac and carry it on their backs to get it where she wanted it to go.  That list of thousands of students she has taught who would help her.  And just for a little bit, I thought about calling the big dogs to help us:  Bo or Byron.  But I refrained because I knew they were busy.

   The employee of Advance finished installing the battery, left the keys in the ignition,  and said, "You all can go now."   He slammed the door shut and went back in the store.  I called on Jesus again to grant me patience.  Sure, we can "go now" with a flat tire.

    And we did the only thing we had the option to do.  We called Quality Towing, and they promptly arrived with smiling faces and kind words to help us out.  Their cost was reasonable, and most importantly, they were genuinely nice to my mom.  They got the Cadillac rolling, and we went on our merry way to make more memories in the Cadillac that had pretty much been my mom's trademark for a very long time.

    But I think the part about this that hurts the most is that my late husband worked at Advance (in Tazewell)  for a long time, and he took pride in helping people when he could for the three years shown here in his little hat pin.

  I understand that auto parts stores are not garages.  I know they're associates and not mechanics.  I get that.  But what I don't get is how in the world a young punk could refuse to help someone like my momma when she is apparently experiencing a flat tire that could easily be fixed.  I assume he has never known someone with a spirit like her and a compassionate soul like her, and as a result, he didn't know how to properly respect her.

   I'd bet my life he has seen Madea movies though, and Madea  (my alter ego) and I go way back.   If a pastor needs oranges, he's going to get them.  If my momma needs air in her tires, she will get it.  And if she goes to buy potting soil for her flower bed and you make her load it in 50 pound bags by herself,  Madea is coming to correct your poor decision making. (I'll write about that at another date.)

   Madea will let this be, and I won't be going back to Advance in Middlesboro, which will be no big loss to them.  I'm not trying to launch some big protest or make some automotive political statement.  I just thought folks might want to know about how this particular store just ignored an opportunity to do a good deed for a decent human being like my mom and put some air in her tires.  That's all.  I'm full of enough hot air about it, I think I could probably take care of that from now on. 

   Thank you Quality Towing for helping us out in our time of need in Middlesboro.



 

   

Can You Bring Me Some Coffee?

            “Can you bring me some coffee?”  In this life I’m wobbling through, that’s probably the most terrifying question I’ve ever been asked.  Only by God’s grace can I make such a declaration, but those words struck a fear in me the likes to which I have no comparison.  He had been my boyfriend for a month, and he asked for coffee.  That was over a decade ago, but it feels and smells like yesterday.   We were both too old to use words like “boyfriend.”  We were both too old to use a lot of words, but I was way too inexperienced to ever be sent to the store to get coffee. 

            I remember buying a coffee pot for my dorm room because I thought that was something we were supposed to have.  I tried to drink it.  I loved the smell of it.  I got plum crafty with the grind, and those of you who were my family in Dupree can just keep all that to yourselves.  Don’t make me tell the Ouija board stories.  Forward.

            My mom always had coffee brewing at home when I was a kid, and my WoWo (term for best grandmother ever who could rock a set of pin curls like a diva on the cover of Vogue) always had a coffee pot full of water on her coal and wood stoves.  The containers were always around, and for some reason, I thought the contents were important.  When I got old enough to share a dorm room with Steph (who deserves a Nobel prize for doing so), I thought I should perk up and drink up.  Now, at forty-two, I wonder what else children pick up just by watching.  No one ever offered me a sip.  No one ever told me I couldn’t have it.  The coffee was there, and when I got all grown up, I wanted the same. 

            I was all grown up by age twenty-one.  All grown up.  In the stages of human development that I studied in college, that’s the stage all the great psychological minds forgot to discuss.  This is the point in my blog where I’d insert some famous quote from a beautiful mind who studied human development, but I’m not going to do that.  I’d cheat and copy and paste it from the Internet, and you’d have a false sense of my intelligence.  It would look like I remembered it from some great work I read, when we all know the only book I can quote besides the Holy Bible is To Kill a Mockingbird and maybe the complete comic series of Calvin and Hobbes.   See, when I was all grown up, my ears stopped working, my mouth went into overdrive, and my mind lost all sense of reason.  It’s a common human condition, but I think my case of all grown up lasted a lot longer than other people who shared my chronological age.  My case of all grown up should have stayed hot for about the same amount of time as a cup of coffee, but it just lingered until the brew got plum moldy.  In fact, I am pretty sure that today is my last day of being all grown up.  I think tomorrow I might just enter the age of plain old grown.

            Do you know Phaedra Parks?  I’ve never met her, but she’s on (not as in sitting upon but as in performing in) The Real Housewives of Atlanta, and she is by far my favorite feisty peach.  She loves to say, “Everybody knows…..” while she looks at the camera like we’re all idiots because we don’t know.  She makes me laugh, and I think she’d say, “Everybody knows when the weatherman says ‘snow,’ we go to the grocery store in the South.”  Amen. 

            Articles have been published in bulk about that mystic behavior we demonstrate when we hear the “s” word.  Conspiracies have been derived to claim that the weatherman is in cahoots with dairy farmers to provoke a sell out of milk and eggs.  The mere grain of the earth is chopped down to the nub all for the sake of a loaf of Wonder Bread because there may never be another.  Honey, I run right to the store with the rest of you, and that’s the only time you’ll ever see me run.  Even if something is ever chasing me, I’ll let it catch me.  It won’t keep me long.  Kind of like catching what my papaw (the diva’s husband) called a gar fish.  Big ol’ fish.  Teeth for days.  After he caught it, he’d wrinkle up his nose and throw it back.  Even though I’m officially one tooth short of a full set compared to a gar, ain’t nothing gonna keep me if I get caught.  But the one thing you’ll never ever catch me buying is coffee even if the next blizzard is coming.  

            So, here I am past the all grown up stage, snuggling into the grown stage of life, and there shall be no coffee in my hand, in my car, or in my home.  For as long as I live, I will remember the day he called and said, “Can you bring me some coffee?” and the fear that followed it.  I borrowed the attached photo from that Interweb.  Just stare at that picture for a minute.  The brands are too numerous to count.  The prices are too varied to justify.  The containers are so diverse that an elementary teacher could make a learning center out of every single empty one.  The smells either make me nauseous or make me want to kiss someone on the lips.  Picking out coffee for someone I had only been kissing on the lips for two weeks…maybe a month…maybe a summer…. was way too much pressure for me even when I was all grown up.  I couldn’t ask what kind he wanted because I was too cool for that.  I was all grown up and all grown up people know that about others.  I couldn’t buy decaffeinated because that could be insulting to his well being.  I couldn’t buy the beans because I didn’t know if he had a grinder, and I couldn’t buy the instant because I didn’t know if it went in a pot or not.  I know I stood in that aisle for half an hour trying to make a decision that I was certain would determine my future from that day forward.  See, when you’re all grown up, that’s what your brain does.

            Today, I heard a colleague mention that she had checked the NOAA website.  That is all I have to hear.  Doesn’t matter what television station you pull up, what newspaper, or what airport you call to get the weather report.  When a teacher says she’s pointing and clicking with NOAA, you know someone has said, “snow.”  My colleague said NOAA and my brain thought, “FOOD!”   I putted on down the road to the grocery store and grabbed up enough goods to get me through a blizzard or the 0.05 inch of snow we might stand a 10% chance of getting tonight.  But tonight and every other time I have to brave up and go to the grocery store, I stop in the coffee aisle and just stare at all those choices.  I’ve never bought coffee again since, and I’m pretty sure I bought the right kind when I was asked to do so.  Once is more than enough.