I have an apology to make to Governor Palin and the people of Alaska. I’m not sure how to make amends for spoiling our chance at a gas line—all that time spent soliciting bids under AGIA (Alaska Gasline Inducement Act), all those hours the legislature spent in special session over the oil tax.
Actually, I’m not entirely certain which high level energy deal I ruined, but it must have been immense, maybe even national, judging from the reaction of the guy next to me in the check-out line at Fred Meyer.
There was a woman in Army fatigues in front of us, trying to buy something which did not have a price code tag. The check-out person was on the phone trying to describe the item to another store employee.
This took a long time, so the woman in the uniform and I had a couple of minutes to smile at each other. She smiled “sorry,” and I smiled back “no problem.” And I meant every crinkle. I’m from Nelchina, remember, and going to Fred Meyer is like going to Disneyland.
It was past supper time and there weren’t very many people in the south Anchorage store—only a few check-out lines open. It was just us and the Christmas decorations and all the different kinds of gum and candy and fake celebrity headlines.
The guy behind me on his cell phone was a dapper little man wearing athletic club sweats. He was younger than I am, which is becoming common.
I didn’t realize how important this fellow was until he hiked up the volume on his side of the conversation. Approximately 22” from my face, he fervently testified “Corpus Christi is the place” and “That doesn’t sound like a deal to me” and “Well, here’s what I’d tell him. . .” and “We’re not biting for that.” And so on.
I don’t know if this has ever happened to you. But in an airport, or a restaurant, someone comes near who is entirely encased in the bubble of his or her own life, his or her own business, which he or she is noisily conducting on a cell phone, perhaps through a little wire or bud which you cannot see, in which case he or she seems to be talking loudly to absolutely no one.
In such a situation, do not try to answer. You—seated with your book or trying to eat a café meal with your friends—are a piece of furniture in the grand corner office of the mind owned by the person on the phone.
Formerly happy with the sort of bovine contentment I feel when I’ve been buying groceries and looking at all the colorful fruit along with useless decorative things that I do not want to buy but enjoy as part of the joyous extravagance of American life, I started to feel uncomfortable in the check-out line there at Fred Meyer. The cell phone man’s conversation enveloped me like a gigantic amoeba.
I tried to get his attention by smiling at him, but his eyes looked right through me. I made outward pushing motions with the palms of my hands and smiled harder, thinking he’d all of a sudden realize that he was too close to me and move off a little to give me some air.
No reaction. The deal, it seemed, was reaching some kind of fiduciary fever pitch.
Well—in for a penny, in for a pound. I picked up my three pound tube of seven percent fat Fred Meyer brand lean ground beef and put it up to my ear. I leaned into the man’s face, which did not take much of a lean.
I said, “I am talking VERY LOUDLY ON MY GROUND BEEF.”
This did get a reaction, but not the one I’d hoped for. The man pried his gaze into focus and actually looked at me, a good start. But then he asked, with some hostility, “Do you have a problem?”
I said meekly, “I was wondering if you could move away a little.”
He did not move away. With a look of profound theatrical petulance he spoke these fateful words into his cell phone: “I have to hang up. I am annoying someone here.”
Then he holstered his phone and stood still as a statue, glaring down at his groceries. The Army woman got her groceries. I got my groceries and I said “Merry Christmas,” but only the check-out clerk said “Merry Christmas” back.
I know how it is when a stranger talks to you and you wonder for just a second if that person is insane and/or dangerous. Maybe the ground beef thing was a little over the top, and I am sorry about that and the very important conversation, too.
I know I can never make it up to the people of Alaska for the loss of that deal, whatever it was, but I do promise to think about the cell-phone man every time I pick up my own cell phone in the privacy of my magic bubble.