Early Immigrant Days-8

In my early days as a new Canadian I used to venture into small grocery stores with great trepidation. This kind of store was
usually a place where you could cut the level of suspicion with a knife and was not the natural habitat of day dreamers. Men
with puffy eyes and ashen-faced women would stare at me cold eyed as I entered. These corner store proprietors were the
stubborn survivors of the super-market boom...where the tantalizing availability of a hundred thousand colourfully wrapped
items surrounding the customer was a cultural imperative. The corner store owners had to pay homage to this trend by
having their goods spread out outside of their counter...so that they could be easily available too. This physical lay-out, of
course. bred paranoia...with every urchin...unshaven...or dark one...appearing to be a potential felon. Given all this I would enter such a store... in that tentative way of a new-comer from a totally different background...and the person behind the
counter would hone in on me...with a cold and questioning eye. I would begin to scrutinize the shelves for something that was vaguely familiar to me...a tin of corned beef...or a box of soda crackers...perhaps...and find myself drifting further and further off...in the maze of brightly coloured offerrings. It wouldn't take long before a voice like a pistol shot would cut
into my meandering...with a "What do you want!?". I would look up guiltily and mumble that I was deciding...and then in my confusion proceed to buy six tins of spaghetti aith meat sauce and six tins of chilli con carne. Coming from my back ground the thought of being mistaken for a thief was absolutely intolerable and this would push me towards my shopping spree.
I had to do something about this state of affairs...so finally I did what I felt I had to do anyway...as I got ready for
a new kind of contact in the new land. I prepared myself like an actor before he goes on stage...making sure my face was set in its stoniest configuration...and my eyes were unblinking and hard...and only then would I enter a grocery store. After that my safaris into the land of Fab and Jello Instant Pudding...became instead of a time of blushes and mumblings...a series of minor triumphs that were a blue print for how to cope in my new country...at that time. Now...and for a long time...I do not usually need to deploy that particular survival mechanism...preferring to meet people in an open and peaceful way...but then...that was the only response my young consciousness could come up with...to help me to survive...to live another day. .............Quester.