Open letter to the woman working at the K-Mart snack bar
posted by bitchphd
Thank you so much for your kindness. I was having a shitty day. First I had to pour my entire change jar into the CoinStar so I would have enough money to buy gas to get home. Then I was feeling incredibly stressed and anxious, no good reason, just the depression coming on again after a couple of days of exerting myself to be social and good company. So the fact that I was having to do an eight hour drive with a little kid and no money was feeling really scary to me, and when Pseudonymous Kid fell asleep I spent two hours sobbing while I drove. Then he woke up and I stopped, and then the car overheated, which is why I pulled off the road and ended up at your K-Mart.
So thanks for seeing me pulling out the $3 I had left in my pocket in order to buy Pseudonymous Kid, who was hungry after his nap, and hot, because our car doesn't have a/c, something to eat. And thanks for making up the difference out of your pocket so that I could afford to buy him a hot dog AND an icee. And thanks for telling us "not to rush" when I realized that you were ready to close up and we were still sitting in the snack area. And thanks for sitting at the next table and engaging PK in conversation and offering to get him some more ketchup so he could finish his hot dog. And thanks for telling me where a phone and a gas station were, and for asking kindly how much further we had to drive, and for wishing us luck and expressing sympathy when I said that the car had overheated. Thanks for pretending to believe me when I pretended for PK's sake that this was no big deal and it would be fine and I wasn't worried about it at all.
I know you couldn't have had any idea what was going on behind all of that--just a woman without much cash and a little kid in the K-Mart looking a little road-weary. Or maybe, since you looked about 50 and are working at the snack bar at K-Mart and told Pseudonymous Kid, when he asked why you needed to go home, that you had to go home to see your baby, and then mentioning to me with a smile that your baby is really actually seventeen, maybe because you are the mother of a teenage girl and you work at the K-Mart to put food on the table, maybe you do understand what that's all like. Maybe that kind of anxiety and fear and needing to put on a good front for the kid is part of your everyday experience. I don't know, just like you couldn't possibly know what all led up to me landing at the K-Mart snack bar with a deliberately calm voice and a smile that was probably a little weak around the edges and windblown hair and a hungry little kid.
You don't know me, and I don't know you. And I'll never see you again. But you really helped me out today. Thanks.
So thanks for seeing me pulling out the $3 I had left in my pocket in order to buy Pseudonymous Kid, who was hungry after his nap, and hot, because our car doesn't have a/c, something to eat. And thanks for making up the difference out of your pocket so that I could afford to buy him a hot dog AND an icee. And thanks for telling us "not to rush" when I realized that you were ready to close up and we were still sitting in the snack area. And thanks for sitting at the next table and engaging PK in conversation and offering to get him some more ketchup so he could finish his hot dog. And thanks for telling me where a phone and a gas station were, and for asking kindly how much further we had to drive, and for wishing us luck and expressing sympathy when I said that the car had overheated. Thanks for pretending to believe me when I pretended for PK's sake that this was no big deal and it would be fine and I wasn't worried about it at all.
I know you couldn't have had any idea what was going on behind all of that--just a woman without much cash and a little kid in the K-Mart looking a little road-weary. Or maybe, since you looked about 50 and are working at the snack bar at K-Mart and told Pseudonymous Kid, when he asked why you needed to go home, that you had to go home to see your baby, and then mentioning to me with a smile that your baby is really actually seventeen, maybe because you are the mother of a teenage girl and you work at the K-Mart to put food on the table, maybe you do understand what that's all like. Maybe that kind of anxiety and fear and needing to put on a good front for the kid is part of your everyday experience. I don't know, just like you couldn't possibly know what all led up to me landing at the K-Mart snack bar with a deliberately calm voice and a smile that was probably a little weak around the edges and windblown hair and a hungry little kid.
You don't know me, and I don't know you. And I'll never see you again. But you really helped me out today. Thanks.
Posted at 6:43 PM
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