Even More Introspection

Tonight, the kid and I did sisterly shopping exercises. This is an important part of female bonding. Or so they tell us. I speculate that time together doing anything you enjoy could be bonding. All of the Camp Ladies were supposed to get together for Laser Tag later tonight, I think we bond much better with that sort of thing.

The business of my sister being in college (and having a boyfriend who's older than I am) affects nothing about her different nicknames. She's the youngest; she's the kid. Logic suggests that at some point, this will have to change. Precedence suggests that it never will.

And, yes, two days before Christmas is a perfectly fine time to go gift shopping. How else are we supposed to get the biggest snowstorm for driving conditions? We can't plan these things - such a combination must be created that Fate can't resist throwing the proverbial monkeywrench into the works. If we went shopping in November, we'd only have crowds to contend with. This is much more interesting.

I was shopping for Mom, she was shopping for Dad. Bed, Death, and Beyond was close enough to Kohl's to satisfy the kid. BDB is a miraculous place - I wander in, certain that here, at least, I will find something for Mom. The whole store has home stuff. And then I realize, as I wander the aisles, that everything here she either already has, she has a better version of it, she has no need of it, or it's definitely not her style. Amazing!

I think I found a pair of socks that might do, but really not the direction I was hoping for.

Kohl's. Ay. In high school, I'd had friends who worked here. I narrowly escaped working here myself, thanks to a rejected interview. Penney's was the other killer for those of us who wanted a decent job in high school. It's just the hours. Some of us are indeed planning on working in the fields of medicine or music education, but everyone else hates a twelve-hour shift.

This led to a conversation with the nice girl cashiering. She's somewhere between seventeen and college-freshman, and I asked if she was closing tonight. Yeah, she said ruefully - almost sadly, really. Kohl's doesn't close until midnight, and if you work retail, you know you've got an extra hour of cleanup after the store officially closes. She was more worried about the weather than anything else, she had to drive back to Dodge Center that night.

Well, do you have anyplace in town where you can crash if the roads are too bad? I was thinking of our family's tactics - all of us have friends in Roch who will take us in for a night. I could probably show up at my ex's mom's, and she'd welcome me in. It's Minnesota - as long as you know someone's name, you're going to offer them a place to sleep if they don't have anywhere else. I don't know if that reflects more on how nice we are, or how bad our weather can get, but it's part of the unspoken culture.

No, she doesn't. And I mentally bite my lip. My hometown is directly on her way home - there's really only one road that you'd be taking from Rochester to Dodge Center, but it's the third town on her way out from here, and mine's the first. My house is easy to find - if you can make it to Byron, you can find my house. I will meet you at the KT if you can't find my house, and get you there safe.

I really want to give this girl my name, my phone number. We've got the couch room for another four people to stay here if they needed it. My house is easy to find. It's safe. In the morning, the weather will be better - it always is. From here to Dodge Center, without ANY safe checkpoint, in this blizzard? Not okay.

Doesn't matter that I don't know her. She's of an age with my sister, and I can't help it - every girl like that might as well BE my sister. If she's in trouble, I want to be able to help. Even if she doesn't need it, sometimes it's a lot off your mind to know that if things ARE too wretched, you've got a fallback.

Of course, she wouldn't accept if I offered. That's the other side of Minnesota-nice. The first half is that you offer whatever you have; the second half is that you refuse whatever you're offered, unless it's offered at least three times. There's an exception if you're really desperate, and that's because when you're desperate, manners be hanged.

Same thing happened at the bookstore the other day. A woman came in, her husband's in the hospital, so she's staying at the Kahler for a few days. Not realizing that Minnesota could be colder than her home state, she'd forgotten her coat, or figured that she didn't need it. I happen to have a really nice coat - it was a gift from my mom one year. It's suede and warm and huge and heavy and fabulously warm. Warm warm warm. Wonderfully warm. I love my coat. But, really, for that weekend, I didn't need it. I work indoors. I usually park in the garage, so I'm outside for all of forty seconds before I get to the skyway. If we went off snipe hunting in the woods, I could probably borrow one of my sister's extra coats. All of this ran through my mind, and I wanted to say, "You can borrow mine, you're just in town for a couple of days. You're at the Kahler, you'll see us at the bookstore most days. It's warm, and it's no trouble for me - really." But I didn't. I thought it might be too weird. The incident stayed with me.

Because, so what if it's weird? I already knew that I wouldn't see her again after this trip. If she turned it down, no big, it's already forgotten. If she accepted, it'd be because she really needed it, and I was okay with that. Yeah, okay, there's a chance that she'd be too busy on her departure day to get it back to me, and I'd really miss it (this is probably the nicest coat I've ever had), but forget about that, what if she needs it now?

And what if she really did need a place to crash tonight, because the roads were wretched on the way to Kasson (as a delivery-working friend of mine mentioned later), and I was the only person who'd asked how long she was going to be there that night?

Denise said, as soon as we were back out in the snow, that I was a very caring person, and she was surprised that I hadn't offered. Not surprised because it was what she would expect of anyone, but surprised because she knows me, and she saw it on my face. I told her that this was part of the reason that I need to move out soon - it's not my house. I can't actually offer it like that without checking with the parents. Or so I rationalized to her. Thinking about it, I knew Mom would probably be fine with it, and Dad's the one who's instilled in all three of us that "look out for other people" business. My excuse only worked as long as I was talking about generic parents, not the ones I actually have.

Three years ago, I was working as a cashier in one of the shopping Meccas of Rochester. There was a woman who needed help with something, but she was deaf. Of the twelve or so cashiers who were working, I was the only one who had even a rudimentary grasp of ASL, but I didn't use it then. I figured that it wasn't good enough, I didn't know enough, it wouldn't be enough to help. And really, she was just trying to find a certain kind of bread, so maybe it wasn't that big a deal. But I still remember the frustration on her face, that there wasn't anybody who could really help her at the time.

Isn't that weird? I know I've stepped up to help dozens of times at Camp, or church, or random people at the gas station...whatever. All these random things, where I saw what needed to be done (or, more likely, someone told me what needed to be done), and I just did it. Or we did it, and it was cool, and something about being together. And I know there've been times when I saw something bad, and wished that there was something that I could do about it, but I didn't have anything I could offer. I don't remember any of those, though. Not the ones where I helped, because that was taken care of and I felt good, but it was time to move on to the next thing. Not the ones where I couldn't do anything.

I remember the ones where I knew exactly what I could do to help, and I didn't do it. Here's hoping I can learn from that.

On the subject of random things I remember, it's been almost two years since a night when a friend was trying to make a decision, and without knowing what the options were, I asked him which one he'd regret more if he didn't do it. Made up his mind on the spot.

Hopefully I've got the same answer now.