MISS EVENTUALLY

Excuse me, would you mind moving your cart over? That’s all I said to the woman, parked next to me, whose shopping cart is sitting in the parking spot that will soon be mine. I’m at Trader Joe’s, parking spots are a commodity and this is the last in the lot. The woman, either doesn’t hear me or doesn’t want to me hear me. She’s busy trying to figure out how to unlock her car. Apparently, in between the bulk cashews and organic lettuce, she forgot how to unlock her own car. Nonetheless, I’ve got 30 cars honking behind me, angry that I’ve held up the line, each hoping I’ll move on so they can take the spot. I ask again, Excuse me, would you mind moving your cart? She turns to me, winks, and says, “Eventually” and goes back to trying to unlock her own car.

Every time I’m at Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s, I’m faced with a similar issue. There’s always some sort of automobile altercation involving two people who in addition to loving sustainable foods, also love Range Rovers. They’ll fight to the end over the last parking spot or the last cumquat. They’ll overpay for organic air, but pass the free sample table 10-20 times saying things like, “Oooh, what’s this?” as if they haven’t already had 30 squares of free cheddar, outed only by the fact that they and the sample girl are now on a first name basis.

I’ve always thought the customers at these expensive healthy markets are so rude because they’re hungry. Tempers can rise when the last real meal you had was cooked kale and barbequed tempeh. Judgment isn’t always clear when you’re on your third day of a 47 day cleansing fast and you’ve run out of Cayenne Pepper, the sole ingredient in your fast other than jicama. People aren’t always nice when they’re hungry.

But these angry people seem to be all over the place. It’s sort of like the three years where everywhere I went I’d see either Jennifer Grey or Jeremy Piven. It got to the point where I started to consider they were the same person since they were never in the same place but one of them was always there. But now instead of Baby and Ari following me around town, angry and hungry are after me. Everywhere I go there’s someone yelling at someone.

From Election Day to yoga class, there they are. The girl who speaks in hushed tones, breathing deeply through carefully modulated breaths is the first to say “No way” when the teacher asks her to move her yoga mat to make room for another. Obama loving, No on Prop 8 voting open minded citizens duking it out in from of my polling place, neither willing to give up the closest parking spot to the building. A woman, kids in hand, screaming at the checker at Babies R Us, “I’ll wait for you outside and cut you!” also has a bumper sticker on her car that reads, “God loves us all.”

Personally, when people like Miss Eventually gives me a wink and an ignore, I want to roll down my window and say, “Well maybe eventually you should go fuck yourself.” But ever since I flipped off that huge angry man who chased me and my husband for 20 minutes through back allies and private roads only to catch up to us and scream, “Now what do you have to say?” I’ve tried to tone it down. Especially when my kid is in my car. I try to remember that it’s not my job to remind everyone else that they’re morons, chances are they already know.

It’s hard to go through life thinking there will be enough because it always feels like there won't be...enough parking spots, free samples, space to exercise. It's hard to remember to take a deep breath and remind yourself there will be more...of everything. There will be enough. And screaming at strangers or taking something away from someone else doesn’t create anything more; it just makes us feel good for a second, until something else makes us feel badly.

So when I see Miss Eventually still struggling with her car when I finish my shopping, I roll myself and my kid over, and show her how to open her car door. My husband calls me Tech support cause I can figure things out, a Mommy MacGyver if you will. Figuring out how to open a car in 2008 isn’t so tough.

The woman thanks me profusely and says she just couldn’t figure it out. I simply respond, “Oh you’d a figured it out.” And while I’m still tempted to ding her car or block her in, I just load my boy and my crap in my KidUV and go home. And while it’s not as gratifying to walk away from the opportunity to be right, getting into it is a bad idea. That kind of stuff catches up with you. Maybe not now, and maybe not a long time from now, but it catches up with you, eventually.