How Not to Get Lost

As a young writer just starting out, you don’t really get a lot of playing time.

Let me define that a little bit more coherently—you don’t get your name in lights, or pep rallies, or people holding up posters, or pasta parties, or hats, or confetti, or champagne explosions, or trophies, or state championship titles, or spirit days, or galleries, or big games. At least, not at first. There may be book signings and fancy events and pats on the back down the road, if you’re lucky. Office parties, black sharpies, movie adaptations, pay raises. If you're lucky. But, for now, you’re stuck.

Writing is a quiet life, and any writer will admit this to you. There isn’t a lot of honor that accompanies having your name splashed across some paperback cover. In all honesty, to most people, an author’s name means nothing. And consider a journalist, slaving for hours before a huge deadline to perfect that one tiny article that only a handful (give or take) will take the time to pour over. Sure, you get credit, but where’s the applause? Where’s the fanfare? Oh, right.

People may say that I didn’t try hard enough. Maybe I didn’t invest enough time into my blog, maybe I didn’t share enough of my work. And yeah, maybe some of this is true. But think about what it means to be a (slightly) better-than-average writer (and I don't mean, in any way, to put myself on a pedestal--writing is probably one of the sole things that I do relatively well, one of the only things that has ever made any sense to me. That's all I'm saying). Essays usually aren't a problem. With a solid foundation, you can bang one out in maybe an hour. Reading is both pleasurable and absolutely horrible--either you're getting lost in a story or you're overwhelmingly jealous of someone else's recognized talent (“why didn’t I think to phrase it like that?”). You start inadvertently familiarize yourself with a lot of words that people don't use that often in normal conversation—short term, this can inhibit you, but it will ultimately (hopefully) benefit you in the long-run. And you think of things in different ways. You may even notice things that other people usually don't, or at least put words to these things in your mind. The weather isn't just sunny--sunlight is spreading itself sluttily over tight downtown shops, jading all that lurks in the shadows. His eyes aren't just blue--his eyes are a deep, hapless hue that refurses to pledge its allegiance to either the hopes and dreams of his deterring past or his capacious future. These are the things your ninth grade English teacher tried to teach you. This is how your mind works. This is what happens when you grow up on a diet of Harry Potter novels and an early interest in the cynicism of alternative rock, prematurely divulging into YA lit and watching too many movies that may have been above your maturity level. Honestly, I don't know why I love to write. I can't really explain it. We'll just live in blissful ignorance. Of course, on top of this all-consuming desire to create, there are about a thousand other day-to-day responsibilities of a normal teenaged kid, like studying for actual classes so you can get the grades that will matter if you want to go to that one specific college and major in that one specific thing. So you can’t really take much time out of your day to write a short story, format a poem, type up a blog post, or, even, god forbid, journal. There were nights during my second semester of junior year when I was absolutely itching to just write one tiny line down and exhaustion from all of my other academic responsibilities crept up on me and the thought was lost forever. Gone.

Strategically, they don't tell you about the burdens of being a decent writer. How many young people can name the best-selling authors of today? How many people read all of the copy in a yearbook? How many people read all of the text in magazines instead of just skimming the photos? How many people get excited about the releases of new novels? How many people get excited about poetry? How many people can actually recognize good writing? And here's what's worse--besides youth readings and poorly publicized competitions, there isn't much opportunity for young writers to make names for themselves. Student publications might pave some stepping stones, but that's about it. If you're not on your school newspaper or yearbook staff, you're not technically doing much. And other kids don't really care. It's all about the athletes; the kids that can punt a ball, run fast, do things that can probably be easily learned. I'm not trying to discredit the virtues of physical activity, or even the glorification of school spirit in regards to football (Ok, maybe I am a little bit), but why isn't there spirit for us quiet crusaders? The ones who can't really do anything all that fancy with our bodies. The kids who are weirdly good at math, or drawing, or writing poetry. Even theater has become an easy thing to praise. I mean, you're literally on stage in front of hundreds of people, flowers are thrown at your feet. People can name dozens and dozens of actors, actresses, comedians, and TV personalities off of their heads. Your English teacher might draw a smiley face on your essay, and then what? They’ve read hundreds of other papers. That penned emoticon means absolutely nothing. It’s not like they’re chasing you down, begging you to wield your pen and take off, charging into the night, flanked by all the other brave students who can kind of write an essay. So how do I know if I’m any good?

There was a really wonderful book I read this year that touched me in a way that no other book has been able to in an extremely long time for several reasons. It was The Opposite of Loneliness by Marina Keegan. It's this collection of essays and stories that Keegan's friends and family compiled from her high school and college years, and each and every word is incredible. She writes of the bliss and accompanying ignorance of youth, the importance of believing in oneself and the world around us and the people we let into our lives, and the joys of being appreciative of the small things in life. Even in her fiction you can feel this desperation she has to move forward, to hold onto a sense of opportunity, excitement, and adventure. She was a graduate of Yale, an award-winning author, journalist, poet, actress, and activist, and she was twenty-two years old when she died in a car accident, five days after her graduation. And that terrifies me. Because people die. People actually die--they can just be going about their day to day lives and they can just die, at any random moment. And death isn't picky at all--he'll take anyone, no matter how promising their life is. "There's a really good chance I'll never do anything," Keegan wrote in her essay, Song for the Special. She was twenty-two. But, you see, she was able to do something--she had this entire reservoir of prose that she left behind and enough people who cared about her legacy to turn it all into a book that immortalized her in a sufficient two hundred and eight pages. But here's my dilemma—I don't have two hundred and eight pages. I’m five years shy of twenty-two and I don’t have anywhere close to two hundred and eight pages. I don't have anything worth sharing with the world. So, what if I die and I leave nothing behind and I'm lost? Because that's entirely possible. And that's so scary to me. While other kids my age can boast scholarships and trophies and colorful portfolios, I'm sitting in my room trying to figure out how I can even start doing what I want to do. That's literally terrifying.

I want to write something beautiful. I want to write something beautiful for you (you know who you are) and I want to write something beautiful for everybody else in this world. I want to be prolific and imaginative and smart. Because these late nights spent with a laptop and a pen have to mean something, someday. 

An Ode to Register Nine

I recently quit my job as a cashier at Harris Teeter. Disenchanting, I know, and maybe a little premature. But I have another job for the summer, so the point is that I'm financially stable (as far as a seventeen-year old's bank account goes), and now I'm less overwhelmed. You could go so far as to say that I am just simply whelmed. My junior year is drawing to a close, sure, but I have the daunting pressures of college applications falling fast upon my tired shoulders and a summer of swim coach woes ahead of me. But hey, I finished APUSH today! That scribblely chapter of my life is done! Celebrate those small triumphs, my dears. Waves of traffic light greens, that feeling after a final exam, those rare occasions when Pandora is undisputedly killing it.

Being a cashier is...interesting, which is really no surprise. Grocery stores themselves are interesting places. You'd be surprised at how much it takes to run a grocery store, or maybe you wouldn't. Maybe it's just not something many people think about all that often. One interesting thing was how quickly everybody was willing to bond with one another. My very first day, I had people introducing themselves and asking me how long I'd been working. Make no mistake, it's not a display of workplace politeness. Everybody just wants another contact they can add in case they need a shift covered. I knew a couple of people  who worked there already, so I didn't feel completely alone, but it was neat to meet other kids my age from all walks of life and chat with them during slow moments. It took me a little while to get the hang of working a register, but this was only because I didn't work very often. I changed my hours a lot, always trying to accommodate for my meager (but prevalent) social life, the stressors of eleventh grade, and my own personal need for "me" time. Different shifts have their varying pros and cons. Working in the middle of the day on the weekend merits chaos, long lines, huge orders, impatient families, but it goes by incredibly quickly. Working weekday afternoons is a little better, slower, but you're guaranteed to have enough time to read every splashy tabloid cover at least twice. Nighttime is the best and worst, simultaneously. It's always slow as hell, especially after seven. And those after-seven people are usually weird as hell. Either they're the smart yet crazy ones who decided to do their major grocery shopping late at night after everyone else has gone home, or they're those who forgot something and needed to run out quickly. If you're working until ten on a typical night, a lot of your time is devoted to mopping floors, organizing plastic bags, wiping down registers, or collecting baskets. Tedious stuff.

I'm not one for small talk anyway, so I guess cashiering was a strange profession for me to choose. I never really chatted with most customers who came through my line, just quietly rung up their orders. I got really good at bagging, if I must say so myself (nobody else really commented on this fact, but I was always careful to put like things together, make the bags a reasonable weight, and not crush any produce). Mainly I was just focused on not screwing up. It's a little bit of a whirlwind, especially when the place is busy. There's a premeditated list of things you have to say to/ ask the customer--"Hi, how are you?" (or something of the sort), "Did you find everything ok?" (or something of the sort), "Do you have a VIC card?" (or something of the sort), "Paper of plastic?" (or something of the sort). You have to make sure everything rings up, be on the look-out for coupons that might be stuck to products, recall or look up various four-digit PLU codes, communicate with your bagger (during the rare occasions that you have one helping you), process the customer's payment, scan all coupons, call over a manager to help you if a coupon doesn't scan (this happens literally every time), print the receipt, STATE, don't ask, that'd "we'd be happy to help you to your car today!", and congratulate them + partake in a paragraph long statement ("You have a chance to win five hundred dollars worth of free groceries if you fill out this survey online which is basically a chance for you to recall how badly I may have screwed up while checking you out today blah blah blah!) if a survey prints out with their receipt. And you have to do all of this pretty quickly. Nobody likes a slow cashier, but nobody really likes to help bag. It's funny. I digress.

Here are a couple things I did wrong:

• I never actually took the time to recite that aforementioned statement about the survey. They don't care. It was two parts defiance, ten parts my own laziness. 
• Sometimes I accidentally asked if a customer needed help out to their car, which doesn't sound bad but we're really supposed to make it a statement, as if I actually would be happy to help you out to your car. 
• I rarely carded anybody, and whenever I didn't, I could tell that they were a little offended, and whenever I did, I could tell that they were a little confused. It was so frustrating! I just never got it right. 
• Sometimes I just simply forgot to give people change which is a stupid thing to do, but not many people paid in cash so it was a break from the normal routine. Natural. Stupid. 
• Sometimes I'd miss coupons on things and customers would complain. My bad--sorry I didn't notice the teeny tiny microscopic sticker on your rotisserie chicken. 
• Often a customer would leave a bag behind and then it would automatically become my fault and we'd have to comp them if they came back for it later. Sorry you missed your fucking avocados. 
• There were a few times, when I'd just started working, that if something didn't scan, I'd just kinda give it to them. Which is what you're supposed to do anyway, but I'm pretty sure I've given away seventeen dollar cuts of meat before. 
• I never really got the official 411 on where things are in the godforsaken store, so when customers asked me I usually said something to the extent of "Um....try four...or maybe ten. Either one." 
• Never learned how to work U-Scan, never wanted to. 
• Did you know Harris Teeter legally can't sell alcohol before 12 on Sundays? I didn't. 

So, Harris Teeter was a weird experience, I think that that much is definitely clear. But my time spent as a lowly cashier did teach me a couple of things. First and foremost, it was my first "real" job, with tax deductions to a physical paycheck and an ugly uniform and a little name tag. I had been technically employed before this, yes, as a swim coach for my neighborhood's swim team, where I earned a significantly heftier amount of money (and arguably gained much more valuable life skills). But my dad was my boss and I knew most of the families that I worked with quite personally. So, while it definitely counts, it also doesn't. Harris Teeter was my first job with people I didn't know, in a not-so-welcoming workplace environment, with a clock I had to punch into, specific things today, an actual coalition of management, a break room, khakis, shifts, a clock that I watched desperately. Even though the fine art of cashiering isn't an exactly desirable or prestigious profession by any means, I did learn a lot. I was responsible for myself. I was responsible for my little register and all the customers who came through it. And even though I was only working for the money, that's a pretty justifiable reason to have a job as a high school junior. I paid for my own gas and most other things. I did a lot of thinking at work, grappled with a lot of big decisions and personal conflicts (scanning items gets pretty monotonous). There were rare (and beautiful) occasions when I did actually connect with customers. Whenever anybody bought everything bagels or cajun crab dip, I was always quick to express my love for such items. Some people were very kind. Others just didn't care, and I don't really blame them. One story that sticks out is this younger guy that bought ground elk meat on a Sunday night. I didn't even know we sold ground elk meat. When I mentioned this, he responded with the same sort of genuine wonderment, admitting that he had never tried elk meat and was buying it on a complete whim. We had a good laugh. I hope one day to be that spontaneous, to someday be content enough with life that when I stumble upon ground elk meat in the grocery store I'll go "hm, why ever not?" 

Although I have plenty of anecdotal evidence and physical artifacts of my time at the good ol' Teeter, my favorite relic are the two poems I was able to write as a commentary on the things I saw as a cashier. I titled them both "An Ode to Register Nine" (parts one and two, respectively), in regards to the actual register nine at the Stone Creek location Harris Teeter, which is almost never in use unless the store is exceptionally (and I mean, like, apocalyptically) busy. Part One has been pasted below. Part Two will come to you later.

AN ODE TO REGISTER NINE

people don’t buy each other enough flowers.

there are plenty of loaves of bread and

cases of beer; bananas, potato chips,

cat food, Coca-Cola.

but the floral department suffers

under the weight of our collective

predispositions.

most faces are blurs—

mere smudges on the proverbial clock

that counts down until closing time.

there’s a shrunken old man with a half empty cart

and a hand full of coupons

and a tall, smart-looking woman

who’s perfume temporarily cloaks the stench of produce

and forces the reality that

yes, there is life beyond the cold gray register,

believe it or not.

it’s true—

most people blend into the harsh fluorescents,

but some do stick out;

they leave a bad taste on the tongue,

or a smile ghosting the lips,

and it could be something small,

like the flair of their signature

or the bags under their eyes,

but, for some reason,

these people exhibit some idiosyncratic resonance

that could smell like sour milk

or taste like fresh coffee.

for example:

a man comes through the line,

sad eyes and a wrinkled shirt,

and in a hushed tone,

he speaks to his son

about visiting mom in the hospital that evening.

he jumps when his phone rings.

and his son looks so lost

even though he hasn’t let go of his father’s hand.

the man doesn’t need a bag for the bouquet of flowers.

they’re the third bunch he’s bought this week.

in another line,

a woman drops a tray of Asian food

and rice explodes across the floor like confetti.

she lets out a string of unholy words

and life goes on.

all so cyclical.

the man says thank you and leaves

his son at his side,

a little bit like an anchor,

a little bit like a ball and chain.

to stay sane,

one might try imagining lives for each individual grocery.

a pop-tart, grabbed on the way to school,

a bottle of wine,

sneakily procured from the refrigerator and shared on a roof,

a thank you card filled with false words.

or else one might succumb to the easier thoughts:

like, I know that it’s my  job and all

but why aren’t you helping me bag your three hundred dollar order

when there is a line four people deep behind you,

able-bodied sir?

but thanks for shopping with us and have a great evening.

across the store,

a girl pulls a boy close in the cleaning supplies aisle

and kisses him with purpose and lingering desperation—

she was smart enough to know that

separation based on rate of movement wasn’t limited to existence

in chemical solutions

and that if she let him drive home,

he’d go too fast.

he’d skid.

he’d crash.

for every “thank you”

there’s an accompanying

“I’m sorry”

trailing behind.

after a while

you begin to learn the circadian rhythm

of this corporate giant.

Saturdays and Sundays

are for families and roommates—

snarky remarks, shoulders squeezed, paper bags.

Monday through Thursday

are for the weathered pros,

zipping through aisles with unbridled efficiency.

keys jangle and phone voices carry.

Friday nights are for the lonely,

the tired,

falling apart in frozen foods.

and you

you, standing so close to the cans of soup,

your head almost in your hands,

because you saw that girl with the Band-Aids up her arms

scan that woman’s boxes of cereal,

and that man with his young daughter whizzed right past you

with the assuredness of somebody

who knows the aisles as well as he know the spattering of freckles

on his daughter’s smiling face

because he can’t bring himself to tell her that mom’s

never coming back.

and you just can’t stop noticing everybody else’s pain

and that’s enough to make you dissolve into tears

in the canned foods aisle.

but you also can’t stop seeing the beauty

in everything but yourself

and that’s enough to make you lose your mind.

you were a traffic light lover—

the parking lot was too safe for you

but the city avenues

made you sick

and the plastic bags in your hands

made you sicker.

so you quietly hope you’ll

bleed to death in a public restroom

or fall off of a balcony,

somewhere,

and land, mangled and at peace,

amongst tailored flower beds.

for now, however,

you lay beside the silence a thousand times

and you dry your eyes on jacket sleeves

and waxy receipt paper;

you pretend that it’s okay that inside

you’re waging a war against some asshole with

absolutely no sense of urgency.

you frequent the grocery store,

maybe because of the familiarity,

or because of the conformity,

but, for some reason,

the linearity of it all

always made you feel much better.

until tonight

when you caught sight of your reflection in the deli display

and only saw a ghost.

then everything suddenly sucked again

and you sought solace

among the New England clam chowders

and lobster bisques.

you leave abruptly

you pass the desolate floral department, the bakery,

the stacks of baskets.

later, a streetlamp laughs at you

as you pass, much too fast.

and you can’t stop thinking about anything else.

and it’s beautiful and it’s sad

and you hate yourself and you can’t explain why.