About a month ago I bought some booze from the crumbly liquor store near my house.

Yeah, booze. This isn’t an upscale shop where the Dockers Gentry debate vintage years with a pinot noir dangling in each hand. Nope, people buy booze here. Root beer schnapps. Cheap gin. Hey Buddy, is that the largest size vodka you have in stock?

So I went there to buy some booze and ice. I paid for the ice but drove home without it. You know how those fat square coolers squat on the sidewalk in front of the store? I forgot to grab a bag.

I rarely purchase a bag of ice. In my mind it’s this goofy, luxury item. I can make ‘em in my own damn freezer for free, so why buy it? Why pay for frosty, glass doughnuts or broken puzzle shapes?

(I know, I know…I have issues with ice. I’ll do some work around it.)

It bugged me that I forgot the ice, but it’s like…what…$1.79? I would pay that much for a soda at the gas station and wouldn’t even remember the purchase, belching it out a half hour later.

But the ice.

The day after I forgot the bag, I thought, ‘I’ll just swing over there and explain I forgot to pick it up and they’ll be cool with it.’ But that just seemed petty to me, so I told myself to forget about it.

A week later, I thought, ‘I’ll just swing over there and explain I bought ice here a week ago and I’d like to pick it up now.’

I couldn’t seem to help it. I felt like there was a creepy little cheering squad grimly chanting in my skull: what about the ice…what about the ice…

And I started thinking about how ‘MINE’-oriented I easily become. That’s MINE. Do you have what’s MINE? When do I get it back? Those MINE pigeons in Finding Nemo got nothing on me. This ridiculous bag of ice was a metaphor for all my graspy encounters where I focus on MY STUFF. If I may quote this familiar Christmas sage: “I only want my fair share. I only want what’s coming to me.”

I tried to let the ice be a metaphor for all the places I think ‘small’ in my life. Where do I put my attention on $1.79 issues while my life’s $50 bills are scattering in the wind? What gets ignored while I’m slow-cruising the liquor store in my brain?

Or maybe ice is a different metaphor: where am I fretting over life’s melting problems instead of sculpting myself into something greater? When I focus on what’s dissolving in my hands, I forget to clap them. Celebrate. Who has time to celebrate when gosh, things are melting all around me?

And when I looked a little further, I noticed that I was even nurturing a slight grudge against the liquor store! How is this THEIR fault? Damn, that’s a bit on the quirky side of full-on crazy. And yet it seems to reinforce a comfortable world view, that somehow I’m the victim of this crazy harsh world and nobody understands me. Sniff, sniff. So I try to be brave and plucky and so what if I get a little drunk on cheap booze to blow off some steam, gimmie a fucking break!

That’s not…you know…shadow or anything.

I was grateful for the forgotten ice – I needed a good metaphor and forgot to pick one up at the store.

***

And that’s where this story ought to end.

But you see, I had forgiven the innocent liquor store. So, yesterday I ventured in to buy some cheap booze. (‘Sir, is this your largest size of butterscotch schnapps?’)

After I left and was a block or two away, I realized that I had intended to buy some ice. I never actually enjoyed that little luxury a few weeks ago and figured I would delight in some freshly-hewn, doughnut-shaped, Alaska ice. Ahhhhhh. Give me my icy fantasy.

I decided the indulgence was worth the trip, so I went back.

Inside I approached the same clerk, a balding man in a dirty shirt. The whole time he was ringing me up – just three minutes prior – he never even looked in my eyes and only grunted ‘thank you’ as a reflex. Not that I wanted us to hug and share life stories while he’s bagging my Rolling Rock. I’m just saying – we weren’t exactly giggle buddies by the end of our encounter.

“I forgot to buy ice a few minutes ago.” I explained to him, pulling out my wallet.

He looked down at the register and then looked at me blankly.

“Just take some.” he said.

“No, no.” I explained. “I didn’t pay for it. How much – ”

“Take it.” he said, looking at me but his expression still blank. “Just take it and go.”

I took a step backwards because I didn’t really understand him. Merchants aren’t supposed to give you an irritated tone for not leaving without paying, are they? Did they change the rules again?

A tired woman came up behind me, gently nudging me aside. He started ringing up her cheap beer.

I’m not sure what happened there. It wasn’t our unbelievably tight bond of brotherhood. It wasn’t customer appreciation day ’cause there was no free beef jerky squares with hot pink frosting. Was his higher power working on him? Was he actually so gifted he could sense the finely-crushed, frosty glint in my ice blue eyes? Did he recognize a man in need – a hug from the universe?

I am not sure why I got a free bag of ice.

But I took it.

This must be a metaphor for something.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 20th, 2008 at 10:55 pm and is filed under Gratitude. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.