Glimpse 10 - Mirrors..

Grocery stores are amazing places. If you go in on a mission and keep your head down and in your own little world, you miss half the fun and learning. Yesterday afternoon was one such event.

She looked harmless enough. She didn't look like a person who would limit her family in anyway yet there she stood screeching "I'd NEVER do that, why would you want to even read about thaaaht? You have five at home you never read about that. You want to spend good money on something you already read about?"

CUB is a chain of grocery stores here and as I browsed through a selection of books that said in a huge heap at an end cap yesterday, there she stood. I grant you this ecclectic mix of everything from how to groom your dog to repair a small engine to decorate a cake to fiction and other non-fiction was a pretty wild ride. Yet every book her son or husband picked up to review, she seemed to have this eagle eye complete with comment ready for them both. I actually started hiding my title selection in case this well intentioned saviour of $4.99 from my debit card launched on me.

Most people I know would tell you I am in 'coach mode' all the time - to which I say bullshit. I may be in coach mentality and curious about things, but I am not in full armour of coach mode. My first clue I was not in that mode was I wanted to make this woman, mother, wife, WRONG. Coaching seeks to make you RIGHT. Coaches believe each individual is creative, resourceful and whole, and all I wanted to do was open my sharp tongued mouth and protect these innocent men who were browsing books, probably to make HER happy to begin with, from her comments. Nobody was a winner here in my mind. Coach mode.. I dare say NOT. Unwarranted consultant mode, maybe.

I wanted to tell, not inform and invite. Asking her anything would have been a skillful manipulation towards her to see where she was grossly in error. Nope, I wanted to tell her...things like, "Hey Lady, give it a rest, I'm sure your husband is naturally attracted to looking at small engine repair, I'd rather spend time in a cold garage than in a warm house with you any day of the week, just let him just look in peace for God's sakes." Or for her son, "So what if he has a few books on paper mache sculpture at home and the last creative thing you made was celery, peanut butter and raisins, he's just looking at new creative ideas." Horrors, I noticed I started to look more at what she was reviewing. I mean really, her verbal assault on her family members was what had drawn my auditory processing in to their drama. If nothing else than to observe but then slowly created this neeeeeeed in me to report to her a smack down version of what I was watching. My desire to remind her that reading is a wonderful thing to be championed in all, to ask her how many diet cook books she already had that she apparently wasn't reading, oh it was like a water fall after a big rain; my mind awash with things to make cracks about. Coach mode? Not a bit.

It was getting too much for me to bear and she hadn't even noticed me when she bumped in to me and announced to them, "I'm done here, let's go check out" and the two quietly put down their books and followed her to a cashier.

Now my mind is awash with questions here. In the five minutes that transpired; not one word came from the mouths of the husband or the son, nor me for that matter. She or they bought nothing. It was curious to watch how people sorted a huge variety of rather disorganized mess of titles/books and even perhaps relationship.

What I noticed most? I was the one noticing what SHE was reading, SHE was limiting, SHE was labeling... and what I've come to realize is, so was I...