Not so Special

Okay I admit it I can be really negative, but sometimes my negativity has a real genesis in flummoxation. I’d run out of tea and went to my local, albeit expensive supermarket, to get some Twinning’s Russian Caravan.  I was on my daily walk and had a $5.00 note in my pocket. I was not sure that was enough but in I tripped, into the land of wallpaper music and fluros. Low and behold the very tea I wanted was on special $4.49. For a moment I was happy. I got to the checkout and the checkout chap scanned the box of loose leaf tea.
”$5.99.” he declared.
I flapped around my $5.00 note and said, “But it’s on special.”
So here’s the deal, the 12 items or less queue was curling around the block and then some and the Checkout Chap disappears, for quite some time I might add, to check the shelf price.
“Obviously not a tea drinker. Doesn’t know where the tea isle is.” I thought.
Finally after a long wait, with the apprehension that the other shoppers were boring holes in my back for holding up the flow of spending, the CC reappears.
“It’s a special only if you scan with your rewards card.” He said. A rewards card is one of those consumer brand faithfulness inducers, Loyalty Cards they call them.
“Hummmm.” I thought, “This is not making me happy.”
For heavens sake I was out for my daily stroll and who carries their cards when exercising, and who reads the small print especially when in large red letters a special price is indicated.  Well, God is good and obviously likes tea drinkers, well this tea drinker in particular, anyway for in the depths of my hoodie a long term resident was found, a dollar coin.  I paid for my tea $5.99, yeah remember when there were cents to actually give real change value.  I destroyed many a purse with the heavy ones and two….
I went home and boiled the kettle and while I was  warming the pot thought it deceitful, a special is a special, and who reads the small print. When you agree on line to purchase this or that, or sigh an insurance do you read all the tiny writing, can you? What with geriatric baby boomer eyes combined with an off hand lazy nature what hope have any of us of overcoming negativity with our simple expectations that things are what them seem.  Ahhhhhhh…..
Please do not misunderstand me I do not need, want or choose to listen to advice on this.  I do not want advice telling me I could have had a win-win scenario if I had asked someone for the use of their loyalty card.  I am okay with a not so happy response in myself.  As I stood there in front of CC I realized that he was tied to the rules of his register in every was as much as I am to my beliefs in wrong and right.  I felt compassion, or what passes for compassion, in the fluro and wallpaper music environs of a supermarket. Compassion for the walls of rules that alienate us from our selves and others.  I choose in that moment to soften my eyes and smile at CC, preparing to shrug and walk away empty handed and it was in that instance that the dollar appeared in my pocket.  I swear to God I had not known of its existence till that moment.

I not only got my tea, I got a laugh from CC, and a sense of the order in my world when I am okay with what is as it is, tea or no tea, that is the question.