Classmate Response

In Response to Susana's Reportage Week 7

This is the most interesting Waffle House occurrence I've never had but wished I did. it's definitely a shocking moment, realizing the guy at the gas station next door is wandering around with blood on his shirt. However, I feel like there are more things begging to be dealt with here. Starting in order, though your Waffle House description successfully makes me envision every Waffle House I've ever been in, I feel like there are other details begging to be touched. At my Waffle House, for instance, no matter what time I seem to go in there, there is always the same guy cooking--middle-aged, peppered hair, and huge, thick glasses. Because we know some of the best strange cases occurs in the workers at Waffle House. I would have liked to seen these characters manipulated more. What were they doing? And more on how they reacted when the man with the blood stepped in? I imagine, open 24/7, these people seem so strange characters. I'd like to know their response a little more.

I'd also like to touch on your relationship with your son. Are these dinner dates common with you guys or is it just a way of catching up? Give me a little more on your relationship.

As well, I feel like some reflection could be integrated here. The gas store attendant, for example, is briefly noted and then even more briefly noted is the trusting woman. I feel like this is the writer's moment to delve into that "strange" behavior. Why does the man cower while the woman trusts? Why do she feel compelled to help him? What is this man from the crash feeling, do you think, while interacting with these characters and how do you as the narrator feel about them?

The wedding characters are literally the toppers on this cake, please write more on them as well. This kinda cheered me up tonight, so I really appreciate this tidbit. :)

Memory

I like to think I’m like most people. I like the American things—apple pie, beef hot dogs, and really bad horror films. I like pretending I’m a bigshot when most days I’m grateful to sail just below the radar. And like most people, I hate being called in to work on my day off. It was Sunday night, and it had been a long day. 

Any day that includes a baby shower stuffed with woman shoving cocktail weenies in their flapping mouths, battling over who knows the most nursery rhymes, is going to be a long day. Coming home and trying to bury my head into my pillow, my phone rang. It was my sister. At work. Trying to relay a message from my boss that begged me to come in to work. It was after five and I was exhausted and I told her no and hung up the phone.

Moments later I got another phone call from work. I ignored it, trying to suffocate my cheeks with the pillow now. Not long after that, my sister texted me. I have no idea why I didn’t turn my phone off, or silence it. I never do. I imagine I like having my sleep patterns interrupted so that everyone can listen to me as I bitch about it for hours. Like most people, I like feeling like my opinion matters.

They asked if you could come in at nine tonight.

I sighed. Or maybe I rolled my eyes, smashed my head into the pillow repeatedly, than stomped around the house for no apparent reason. Obviously “no” would not be an acceptable answer tonight. I texted her back and told her to tell them I’d be there. I really hate being called in to work.

Coming in at nine o’ clock, felt like coming in at any other time.  Except by now the store was mostly empty and the employees eye you kind of oddly because the majority of the perishable department members are clocking out while you’re clocking in. A couple, “kinda late aren’t you?” comments that you kind of ignore and then you go to your position, whip out your phone, and just stand there.

I was running self-checkout tonight, we call it U-Scan, and I wrapped the handheld that controls the machines around my wrist by the attachment. I whipped out my phone, and with the store almost empty, typical of a Sunday evening when everyone's kids were in bed dreading another Monday morning, I texted and surfed, and played Words with Friends. When I wasn’t doing that, I was wandering the Front End, bothering my manager and the other employees that darted in and out of the front or that worked the registers. It was boring work but I should admit it was one of a few times I earned a very easy, very lazy paycheck.

I don’t remember who approached me with it first. Maybe the store manager for the night, a tall brown-skinned man who often wore his dress shirts crisply pressed and blue. Why he seemed to prefer powder blue hues over all other shirt colors was a mystery to me, but under his heavy brown jacket he was usually wearing blue. Perhaps it was my supervisor, working accounting that night—redhead, bony, and giving off more smoke than a barbecue pit. Either way, the both approached me, asking if I had heard about the creepy man.

It is important to understand that at Kroger, we have more than one creepy man. There is one gentleman, who we’ve decided must be homeless. He comes in, long hair swaying, smelling foul and eyeing everyone in a way that makes our customers pause. Of course, they end up standing there too long and catching a whiff of him, and that’s when the complaints start. The employees on the other hand have learned to hold their breath and run. Fast.

But this night he was not the creepy man they were talking about. They explained to me that this man was a common customer, but I had never seen him before. They described him to me as a Charles Manson lookalike, which surprisingly enough did not narrow down the field for me. But he had come in earlier today and grabbed a Gatorade and was walking the store, sipping it. One of the customers pointed him out to our manager and told him that they and another employee did not see this man purchase his drink. My manager spotted him and as he started to approach this man, the man turned in the other direction and hightailed it out of the store, Gatorade in tow.

But the man came back later to purchase two loaves of bread.  The Manson twin spotted my manager while he was in the store and approached him, bread loaves swinging in his hand. He stopped in front of him, and our manager, Mr. Nash is his name, gave the man a familiar but friendly greeting. He didn’t answer, nodded it off and muttered.

“I’m sorry.” He told him, and before Mr. Nash could respond, the man rushed off for the registers to pay for his bread.

“Probably felt guilty for stealing that Gatorade,” Mr. Nash told me later, “but I couldn’t prove that you know. 

So when I caught up to him later I told him that I didn’t know what he was apologizing for, but he was okay by me.”

I remember staring at my manager, my right eyebrow slightly raised because that’s the only one I can lift. I didn’t say anything, just stared at him as he continued the story.

Apparently the man went home, and then made a phone call up to the store, asking to speak to Mr. Nash. He asked when my manager would be leaving, and Mr. Nash explained to him that the evening manager usually switched for the overnight manager around 11 at night. The man then asked Mr. Nash if he would wait for him and Mr. Nash said he would. He hung up abruptly.

So here it was, a little after ten when the man showed up. I knew it was him when all the front-end employees fell silent, crowding in spaciously conspicuous areas around the front door, watching him. My redheaded supervisor dodged behind customer service, hovering over the phone and watching him without faltering. 

While everyone else ducked and meandered to avoid his gaze, she watched him without hesitation. This was typical of her, and it was probably why this man ended up gravitating to her later.

He was dressed in camo, which he had not been wearing earlier as I was later informed. He wore a tight green bandana on his head, wisps of black hair framing his ears. He was dirty, hands shoved into his pockets and he walked with his head low and bobbing, swaying with each exaggerated step forward. He locked eyes with Ms. Brenda, a sweet older lady and the only cashier left at that time of night. Then he moved over to the cupcakes and stood there, waiting. I found out later it was the last place he had spotted Mr. Nash.

Everyone was in a tizzy. We were all women, and we were all afraid of what this odd man might do. Afraid of his changed wardrobe. His crazed appearance. Afraid of his dirt. I watched the man, my heart pounding, waiting. Not because he was scary, but because of what heightened sense of alertness everyone in that store felt. We all watched him disappear into the store and the front end buzzed with fear. And then just as quickly as he appeared he dodged out of the store, almost as if in a run, and did not come back that night. Mr. Nash appeared soon after, shaking his head and chuckling.

“All of you are blessed.” He said, sweeping his hand out around us, “he came to me and told me, bless you  and all those around you. Then he left. So, you’re all blessed.”

And we stared at him, some of us glancing where the man disappeared out the store. Some of us, like Mr. Nash, shaking our heads and rolling our eyes. And I, like most people, not sure if I should have come into work after all that night.

Reportage

I shoved the bagel into my mouth. It stuck to my throat, making me thirsty, but I put another piece in and chewed. The onion flakes crunched into my teeth. I love onion bagels, but they’re so hard to find where I live. 

I’m not sure why they have them further south than in Douglasville, despite my store having every variety of powdery protein bars you could ever not want. Perhaps people just don’t like starting their breakfast with onion breath. Either way I bit into another piece, trying to distinguish the taste of sweet cream butter from the twang of onions. The room was almost dark and my free hand tapped absently at the laptop keyboard.

My mother was in the other room of her small, one bedroom, low income apartment. The bedroom door was wide open, but except for the light drizzling in from the barely open blinds in the living room, the house was dark and quiet. Except for my mother praying.

I sat on the couch in choked silence, half-listening, half-afraid to. My mother prays every morning, and when I visit her, she excuses herself not long after waking up to “start her day off with her Father.” I wait, preoccupying myself, trying to be respectful.

This time however, it was just me and her. My sister was back in Douglasville and I was here by myself. Her husband stepped out and I waited in the darkened living room with my breakfast, though I have no idea what I was waiting for. Her voice poured into the tiny room, rising and falling like deep breaths full of prayer. I half-listened, not out of disinterest but because I almost feel like I’m intruding when I hear her. I could hear her voice inflect again, begging, pleading. “Let her know You.” She begged, and I swallowed the last of my bagel—hard. I had no idea why, why “her” and “she” could mean so much, but I felt like she was praying for me. Perhaps it was guilt that set in, or shame. Not that I have no religion, or that I don’t know the Lord, but just the idea of my mother on her knees in a room where I could not dare see her. I was really, really thirsty.

I walked as silently as I could into the kitchen. My mother sniffled, crying with her prayer. I set my burgundy plate down on the counter, using my fingers to pad the drop. Then I opened the fridge and grabbed a Yoohoo and silently weaseled back to the couch. She was almost crying now, praising and pleading, and I sat on the couch, trying to push her voice out, trying to think. It felt intimate. I felt wrong. Who was I to intrude on her conversation? Her business. I set my head back on the couch and closed my eyes. My mother’s voice fell and I tried not to remember any words, tried to respect her privacy. I wondered if I was supposed to go in the room with her, fall in my knees and agree with her. I was ashamed that I hadn’t done it already, and scared that I didn’t know what would happen if I would. Would it seem in genuine? Disrespectful? Would I interrupt her midstream?

I sipped the Yoohoo and continued waiting, the laptop screen reflecting light off my face. Still unsure of what to wait for. My mother was sobbing now, her voice intelligible only to her, and perhaps God. Her voice lifted and bounced. I sat there in silence, letting her voice flood into the living room, and squeezing out the nagging at my ear.

Oddity

At my mother’s house, on the main wall of her kitchen, is a set of cupboards and cabinets. On top of the cabinets is an artificial potted plant. The plant looks like budding artichokes, dusty and odd-colored. It’s not green, but more gray and brown, and a dusty film covers the ridges of the buds. The pot looks like it is made of clay, a rusty brown color that fades into gray at the top. It’s not much bigger than the size of my head. An owl sits right next to it, just slightly smaller than the plant, eyeing me with a cockeyed expression. His black pupils, almost seem to shake in the round orbs of his eyes, his chest puffs out over the edge of the cabinet and no matter how I move he seems to be watching me, incredulously.

They appear to be a set, but I cannot understand how they relate to one another. It might help if I knew exactly what the plant is, some cactus perhaps, but instead I look at it and I remember that dreaded vegetable, the one that stabs my fingers through the thin produce plastic bags and I try to weigh and ring it up. Small strands of fuzzy plantlike fingers shoot out of the top and curl over, heavy with dust. But it’s the owl you always see first, looking at, eyeing you. An owl, always aware, perhaps most nosy, more predatory, than wise, and he’s feeling in the mood for more than artichokes.

Junkyard Quotes 1-4

I took a bunch of headlines from the Sunday AJC that seemed kinda odd.

1.       1. Coping with death in the workplace

2.       2. Drug court: Saving money, Saving lives.

3.       3. Decorated Veteran of the Teenage Conflict—Courage under Criticism

4.       4. National research shows some kids have higher academic performance when taught by teachers from their own ethnic groups.

Original Prompt

Bernard Cooper's "Burl's"

My parents usually lingered after the meal, nursing cups of coffee while I played with the beads of condensation on my glass of ice water, tasted Tabasco sauce, or twisted pieces of my paper napkin into mangled animals. One evening, annoyed with my restlessness, my father gave me a dime and asked me to buy him a Herald Examiner from the vending machine in front of the restaurant.  

Cooper’s essay begins in a restaurant setting. He uses this setting to subtly flesh his parents’ characters, as well as uses it as the source and occurrence of his main topic--gender identification. It is at Burl’s that he has his first brush with gender confusion, and it is there after that he begins questioning the roles and the binaries that he identifies with. Cooper fuses these gender identities with both his parents stark roles and his wavering one and as a result reveals more about their characters and their roles in relation to one another—their intimacies or the lack thereof than could be revealed through simple telling. The reader also focuses on the narrator’s struggle to fit into expected character. Cooper travels throughout the work, but his return to Burl’s places it as both the opening and closing of his work, contrasting the plastic and phony aspects of the restaurant to the phoniness of reality. Cooper questions what is real and where does gender begin to define? 

However, there is an interesting section in the beginning where Cooper focuses on tightness—holding tightly to the dime or paper, the tightness of the transvestite’s dresses. Cooper struggles to fit the world into two tight binaries, and in doing so, struggles with the open interpretation of the world around him. My challenge is to take a moment where you have felt tight, whether that was feeling like you were trapped in a tight, stressful situation or even wearing a pair of jeans that don’t fit quite right anymore, and then reflect on that tightness and attempt to tie it into some moment of discovery, or openness. 

Improv 1, Week Eh...

I’ve always had a fascination with Applebee’s slogan: Eating Good in the Neighborhood. Partly because I’ve never considered Applebees a part of my neighborhood. I actually don’t consider anything outside of my housing complex a part of my neighborhood. Douglasville’s claim to fame is that it is the place where Atlanta keeps its charm. These slogans scribbled along the bottom of location maps in Arbor Place Mall, it had to be true. But I don’t feel hospitable to Douglasville. It is at once, a large and small town. Everyone knows one another, and if they don’t, they can be related to one another without crossing more than two people. We have all crossed paths at one point or another. But relativity aside, there is always the distance, the avoidance to talk to one another, to relate to one another. There was nothing about Applebees that said neighborhood to me.

But it was the place where things happened. It wasn’t very big, shoved somewhere between a Wendy’s and a Best Buy, it wasn’t hard to find but it wasn’t all that obvious either, until they changed the sign to include a bright red neon apple that catches the sun and reflects it in your eyes when you drive past. Every once in a while you’d read the sign and learn about upcoming trivia or poker nights, big prizes to be one, but for the most part it was just another restaurant for the family to go and eat for a relatively decent price, and quality that was significantly better than the Golden Corral just a few hundred yards away.