Identity 1

What does it mean to be a 6'0" tall, 180-pound, white American male?

Amused by my circumstances, this is something I ponder as I stand behind a drawer full of money, delivering change and pleasantries for seven and a half hours a day at minimum wage.

Sure, I'd told myself hundreds of times, "I won't be at [insert name of grocery store] this summer. I'll be elsewhere; I'll find something more productive to do with my life." But, as I found out, telling yourself something does not necessarily amount to said something becoming reality. And so here I am, at Kroger, the Big K, the King of all K's, the [insert something with letter 'k'].

But to be honest with you, dear reader, this K took me by complete surprise. It seems to be run very effectively, and everyone is always smiling. I've already made a lot new friends there, and being a near-perfect fit for the average Monroe county native--understanding the geography, history, demographics and language of the area (barring the fact that I'm an atheist)--I feel I have a unique opportunity to lose myself, and then find myself, and then maybe lose myself again in a sea of others just like myself.

But what does it mean to be myself? What is this flesh, this body? What is this mind, and this body hanging from it? Whence came my identity, and how much is it rooted in the past? How much of it can I control, and how much of it has been created for me? How much am I a part of these present circumstances, and how much am I detached? How much of me is in each one of these people I see across the counter? How much of the inner makings of these people who are seemingly just like me but often so vastly different from me can I actually understand?

These are things I think about at my new job. Sometimes, I think maybe the Korea veteran in the blue button-down knows. Sometimes, as he's peering at me through those thick glasses, watching me scramble haphazardly for nickels and dimes, I think he understands me a little bit better than I understand myself. Or, when he opens his wallet, and I see a faded black-and-white photo of a beautiful woman, I think he knows a little bit more about life than I do. I think he knows a little bit more about joy, a little bit more about loss, a little bit more about sorrow than I do. Sometimes, when, jaw clenched, his near-crippled hands battle his Parkinson's to move his groceries from cart to conveyor belt, I think he knows a little bit more about struggle than I do. Does he?

Other times, I think maybe the old florist knows. Is she a florist? I don't know. I do know that every time she comes through my line, she's smiling...and buying flowers. Maybe I'd be smiling too if I were buying flowers. Would I? Is she going to plant them when she gets home? Will she take the same care when she finds a suitable spot for her hibiscus that she took when she chose the background design for her checks? Her checks have a flower on them...it's a rose, a red rose, and when she was in the bank and she told the lady behind the desk that she wanted her checks to have that one, pointing at the intricate, botanical design with her index finger, I bet it made her smile. And when I see it, I think of her choosing it, and it makes me smile. Can I communicate that joy? Does she understand my joy, or only through her own eyes?

All the while I'm just enamored with the constant interaction I get with the people around me, and my day at work is spent in this sort of happy-go-lucky, question-filled daze, replete with smiles and hearty Midwestern greetings (i.e., "how are ya? how's it goin'?"). I often find myself nearly doubling over in a kind of joyous warmth, my heart enveloped in the giddiness from the interaction of the raw emotions that wrap around my brain like a warm, bulletproof blanket and the rapid production of almost-unanswerable questions that, like machine-gun rounds, try to break through from within. My seven and a half hours, supplemented by my union-sanctioned lunch and two breaks, usually pass extremely fast, and as I casually make my way out to my car at the end of the day I find my head abuzz with new thoughts.

I took the long way home from work today, a twisted, bumpy, winding series of roads going through an area of the county known as Bigelow Flats. As I passed the old Potawatomi burial ground, marked only recently with a large stone memorial by the history-saving aspirations of a white, middle-class family of (mostly) German descent much like my own, my eyes took in the wide, open grassland where many people most certainly lie lifeless a few feet beneath the topsoil.

As my car gently maneuvered around the bend, an onslaught of long-oppressed voices seemed to cry out, springing from the silent mouths of the Potawatomi themselves, vigorously besieging my beleaguered mind. What separates us from you? Where, then, is the divide? If you cross the road, if you step into our holy ground and thus into our history, do you in some sense become a part of our tradition? By stepping into their history, can I begin to understand these people, a people so alien to my own? Or has their history died with them? Will my history die with me? For how long do we last, and when do we cease?

But I know their voices are soon to fade, and I will be left only with my thoughts. The purr of my engine continues, and in a slow-motion sort of way my eyes blink and shift from the low-lying marshy graveyard to my left and back to the road. In a few moments those people are gone, lost to my mind...but I keep pondering, I keep questioning. I move on; I persist...adrift, or otherwise alone.