New Year's I - Greetings and Salutations

For New Year's Eve, my husband and I were gearing up for a party at the home of good friends who live across town. Our assignment was simple: bring booze, and an appetizer.

Out of the two of us, my husband lays claim to being the cook. He’s good. I’m not bad. I’m more efficient, cleaning as I go and using recipes. He’s more experimental and leaves a big mess. He just wants it more than I do. Gets more pleasure out of it, I suppose.

Originally I had said to him, “So what should we pick up?”

He’s annoyed. “Let’s make something,” he says.

We decide on a Vidalia onion tart (pie sized) because it fits our New Year agenda of making conscious choices, like trying to be vegetarian and nixing the American consumer mentality of, let’s pick something up. Yes! We would be better. We would make something homemade with care and fresh ingredients.

“We need to act like the people we want to be” he said.

Okay. He's right. I'm lame for even suggesting we pick something up.

I get our ingredients at Ingles, our supermarket. Our neighbors have told us that the locals call it Wingles, for West Asheville Ingles. And yet others call it, Third World Ingles, because it hasn't been updated like other Ingles in the city. No lush sprayed vegetables, gigantic aisles and all the other crap we don't need and that only keeps the price of food too high. In short, it’s old school shopping like when people were more fucking normal.

To me, our Third World Ingles is a Shangri-La compared to The Met at 2nd Avenue and 6th Street in Manhattan where we used to shop. The Met. I shopped there for a decade. Even the name is horrid. It’s a dimly lit room where five meager aisles hold the bare essentials for existence. Two carts cannot simultaneously pass. The canned goods are covered with a layer of dust and hair. A sullen cat or four patrol the corners for running vermin. Checkout staff curse and huff if you come to the register with unpriced food. I’m not soft when it comes to shopping at the grocery. I can do Third World Ingles easily, I think. They don’t have Vidalia onions, so I settle for some sweet onions. I’m thankful for it.

I learned my first week in town, that the self check register at Third World Ingles is the right choice for me. On my own, I can scan at a pace that won’t offend anyone, don’t have to make small talk with the cashier, and the line is always the shortest.

I do most anything to avoid small talk here in the south because I don’t get it. I’m trying to wrap my head around it. In the north, if niceties are to be used at all, it’s Hi or Hello, a smile or nod. Not ever a question. Never, How are you? I’ve learned, while twisting in the wind, that fine is not a sufficient answer. I think I insulted a cashier my first week in town by answering, fine, the word hung in the air with my unsure upward inflection, eyes glued to my wallet. She looked at me so expectantly and then, like I had let her down. From what I can gather, again, still trying to figure this out, you are expected to re-ask the same question. Fine, how are you? Actually, no. That’s not right. It’s more dragged out. Oh I’m just fine, thank you, and how are you today? Really, it’s ludicrous considering we’re not really asking real questions or stating real answers. Why bother with the oxygen and carbon dioxide exchange? I’m more comfortable with Hi or a simple smile or nod. Perfect. Done. In. Out. Next?

It’s not that I don’t like the cashier or think she is unworthy of speaking to. On the contrary, I respect her privacy. Here she is, working. I respect her space. Space is something we have less of up north. More people. More cars. More noise. Perhaps here, people crave more interaction because there are less people? I wonder if I will evolve into a person who doesn’t crave my space and privacy now that I need to fight for it less. Will I eventually be wandering over to the grocery store to engage in conversation?

Like learning to bow a greeting in China, or cheek kiss a greeting in Italy, I need to learn the ways of the sourthern culture greeting if I am to make my way. My first New Year's resolution is to stop going to the self check line and start practice talking to live cashiers.