Monday Morning Musings

Posted on December 28, 2015 under Monday Morning Musings with no comments yet

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December 25/December 27

 

 

Apologies to my long suffering readers. You have heard this lament, many times before. But what the hell, it’s Christmas and anything goes.

Yesterday, the warmth of Christmas was washing over me as I stood in the lineup at Sobey’s in an effort to re-stock the fridge. And it wasn’t any lineup. It was the short lineup. The “quick checkout” was inexplicably closed but they had two other checkouts operational. The store wasn’t very busy early in the morning. But it was busy enough that there were people amassing at the two checkouts. One lineup was considerably longer than the other. Why, of why do I always fall for this ploy?

There was only one person ahead of me and she had a two year old ( I’m a grandfather and can identify 2 years old quickly and easily ). The two year old may have been suffering a Christmas hangover because she was, shall we say, a bit whiny and cranky. No worries. There was nothing left on the conveyor belt and the mother of the child had her purse at the ready. I secretly grinned at the poor saps in the long lineup.

Rendering the payment for the groceries is normally a straight ahead affair… unless you have left your credit cards in the car. The purchases had already been wrung in so no other customer could be served until this impasse was resolved. “Oh, my credit cards are in the car.” . Now, the poor mother, in all fairness,  had probably only slept 3 hours in the past four days so I’m not singling her out personally.  Scraping fingernails down an old slate chalk board could not have grated on my nerves any worse.

Mother and child casually (!) left the store to retrieve the cards. And I stood and waited…and waited… and waited. Now of course, the other lineup had become a mere trickle and for a moment ( a moment of sheer utter insanity ), I thought about changing lineups, but, having been down that road before, I bit my lip and endured the last of the agony. When the customer pondered whether or not she wanted the “Jamie Oliver stamps”, I was thinking very bad thoughts.

Just another precious shopping story.

So, what was the highlight of your Christmas? Did you test the outer reaches of the glycemic index?

For many of us, getting to meet and share time with our first Syrian refugee, Tareq Hudhud, was the high point of the holidays. We invited him over for his first taste of a street hockey game followed by large doses of scrumptious holiday treats ( thanks KMD ), a singsong and his first glimpse of hockey on a large screen TV. It is unfortunate that his new home country lost the contest. Tareq is a bright, very well educated guy and hopes to be practicing medicine in the not too distant future.

The most poignant part of the afternoon was the last half hour when he explained in gut wrenching detail, the horrors that he and his family have lived over the past four years. His story will be well documented so I’ll forego the details in this space. None of us can possibly fathom what the Syrians ( and millions of other people from other war torn countries ) are going through. He expressed deep gratitude at the welcome he received at the airport from representatives of SAFE and how Antigonishers have treated him since he got here.

Let us continue to embrace our new neighbors as more of them arrive in the weeks and months ahead.

“Faces in the Crowd” will continue this Thursday.

Have a great week.

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