Out of coffee. Time to go shopping.
And for coffee I need to go to Trader Joe’s, which is one of the better grocery stores in the area. They have more of the odd, hard-to-find items that I like, but they don’t have the less-than-reasonable prices that you find at the yuppie grocery stores like Nugget or Scotts Valley Market. If I want cheese puffs without trans fats, I shouldn’t have to pay three bloody dollars for a seven-ounce bag. If I want a good dark-roast coffee blend, I shouldn’t have to pay $9 for 12 ounces. (The one gripe I have about Trader Joe’s is I shouldn’t have to spend an extra buck for decaf, but $11 for 24 ounces is still better than the $18 it’d cost me elsewhere.)
Trader Joe’s is in Santa Cruz proper. When people ask where I live, I usually say “Santa Cruz” because it takes a whole extra sentence to tell them that Scotts Valley is a yuppie-infested suburb of Santa Cruz; it’s just easier to say Santa Cruz. But there’s a huge difference between suburbs and cities. In a suburb, if you’re liquored up and walking down the street, the cops come by and hassle you. In a city, the cops are too busy handling domestic violence cases and drug busts, and the only people who hassle you are other drunks and the occasional overzealous rent-a-cop.
The lady at my bus stop was quite liquored up; the smell reminded me of Grandma Betty. (Someday I may write an entry about my homeless alcoholic grandmother, but not today.) She accosted me before I could even get to the stop: “Could you do me a favor?”
“Maybe,” I said, which is my usual response to requests for favors.
“They won't let me in the store,” she said, pointing to the downtown Long’s Drugs. “Could you get me six oatmeal cookies? No, wait—six oatmeal cookies and a brownie.” She handed me three thrashed dollar bills. “And you can keep the extra dollar.”
“Let me put my stuff away first,” I said. I was carrying two grocery bags, and I wanted to stash the groceries in my duffel bag before I got on the bus. I also had a roll of postal wrap that wasn’t gonna fit in the bag, and I always feel uncomfortable carrying open grocery bags into a store. When you do this, the rent-a-cops stare at you more often in case you’re planning to do a little shoplifting. But since I’m a white guy and my pants are pulled up properly, they usually let me slide.
I took the $3 and went into the store. The snacks she was talking about are the Little Debbie™ kind; the cheap crap that I used to buy before I realized their ingredients were going to give me my first heart attack before the age of 40. They were 25¢ each, and the brownie was 50¢. If she was hungry, she should have gone to Taco Bell, crappy as it is, and bought 99¢ burritos; they wouldn’t kill her as quickly as the Little Debbie™ junk and she'd have a full stomach. But if she was really concerned about her health, she wouldn’t be spending her food money on liquor.
“Snack time,” I said as I returned with her baggie of goodies. She thanked me and left.
“You're a good man,” commented the fellow who was waiting at the bus stop.
“Not as good as I could be,” I said, “but I try.”
“Well, that’s all you can do,” he said.
No, I thought. I could have done more. I could have—should have—put her extra dollar in the bag; she wouldn’t have found it until she was away, and I didn’t get her the junk food because I needed the dollar. I did it because she asked. It just didn’t occur to me how to slip the money back to her.
Next time, though. ’Cause there will be a next time.