The only similarity St. Patrick’s Day 2020 had to St. Patrick’s Days past was that I found myself lined up with strangers. But we weren’t all waiting to hear Irish music, or to see Irish dancers, as we stood several feet apart from each other, in no real semblance of a line at all. The only mention of the occasion was when one of my fellow early birds lamented that she’d been unable to find turnip for her boiled dinner.
What brought this band of strangers together was necessity. And as we all gathered, we somehow collectively chose to be as positive as possible, given the strange circumstances of our assembly. I was the first to arrive around 7:25 am, thinking the store opened at 7 am. It turned out to be 8 am. Others began to pull up. We parked in proximity, and most of us nodded and smiled.
When we eventually started to trickle out of our vehicles and head towards the door, there was an immediate camaraderie. One fellow person waiting, the first to get out, told me as soon as I approached her that her car was too stuffy to sit in because she’d had a hellacious hot flash. I doubled over in laughter, as another woman joined us. She amusingly told us how all her sons, unexpectedly home from college, were depleting her cabinets, forcing her out to shop. One man said he was waiting to hear if his child had found a plane ticket that would get her home from her Florida college, but that her flight had been canceled the day before. We compared how far our children were traveling: from other parts of Massachusetts, from Washington, D.C., from New Hampshire, from Kentucky. I shared that I was waiting for one of mine to return from studies she’d just started in Argentina. The group, now nearly a crowd, wished for her safe return. All of us seemed to be adjusting to highly unanticipated arrivals and circumstances, as we talked about hunkering down for the foreseeable future.
My fellow shoppers shared all the local places they’d been in the last few days, trying to give each other tips and reassurance. We trusted we’d assembled smartly today, based on online inventory availability we’d viewed. One couple regaled us with a tale of hoarding they’d witnessed and we shook our heads and muttered in disapproval. In those 17 minutes, our not-a-line, but semi-circle of strangers, grew. We greeted each newcomer, caught them up on the conversation and joked and laughed. And when a person finally came to open the store door, we waved to her, teasing that we were there for items like flat screen TVs and toys, and not the necessities we all wanted more than we’d probably ever wanted those things.
As she welcomed us in, we shuffled and spaced our way through the doors, yielding the recommended safety zone. We wished each other luck, as we all headed to the same aisles, seeking the toilet paper and cleaning products we’d been unable to find elsewhere. We yelled directions to each other and decided who to follow when it became clear that a few people knew the exact location of the highly sought items. When we discovered that the store had shelves of inventory, we celebrated together, lifting our one package of rolls like trophies above our heads, claiming a small victory amid the uncertainty. As we quickly dispersed, we said our goodbyes, and lobbed final bad puns at each other about our paper product treasure hunting.
It was not the St. Patrick’s Day I was used to, but it had some elements of the best: jokes were tossed and new friends were made. So here’s a toast to the random assemblage of shoppers whom I likely will never meet again: may you all stay safe and healthy, may you all have toilet paper, and may some turnips be found.
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Previously published on “Change Becomes You”, a Medium publication.
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Photo credit: Wesley Tingey on Unsplash