Random Thoughts

More of your public school dollars at work

My last blog post was about Mark Berndt, the third grade public school teacher with a 30 year career that included taking sexual bondage photos of his students and spoon feeding them semen.

It just keeps getting worse. As I predicted, Berndt’s pedophiliac behavior goes back further than the year he was finally caught  (bolding mine):

The L.A. County Sheriff’s Department says the former teacher charged this week with serving spoonfulls of his semen to more than a dozen students at a South Los Angeles elementary school was investigated in a separate case in 1994 but never charged.

Back then, a female student accused Mark Berndt of trying to inappropriately touch her under a desk.

The case was referred to law enforcement and evidence was presented to prosecutors, but the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office declined to file a criminal case.

A DA’s office spokeswoman said Thursday she was prohibited from commenting on any closed cases more than 60 days old, and the sources could not provide more information about why the case against Berndt was rejected.

The Los Angeles Unified School District has said it was unaware of any students or parents ever making a complaint about Berndt’s behavior, but Superintendent John Deasy now says he’ll investigate to find out if any reports were ignored.

Sure, the LAUSD was “unaware.” Like hell they were. The allegations against Brandt are going to stretch back over decades, decades of willful ignorance on the part of the public school system.

…on Wednesday, two women said school officials investigated rumors about Berndt back in 1990.

Marlene Trujillo, who was a fourth-grader in his class at the time, spoke to the Times about Berndt’s bizarre behavior.

She said Berndt often moved his hands under his desk, near his lap, at the front of the classroom.

She and other students had seen a jar of Vaseline in one of his desk compartments, she told the Times.

Trujillo, now 30, said she was called before a school counselor with two other girls after one of them complained about Berndt’s alleged behavior.

She said the counselor chalked it up to the girl’s vivid imaginations and the subject was dropped.

Vivid imaginations? Seriously? That’s the best the school counselor could do?

When the Miramonte school board voted to terminate Berndt, he was given the time and opportunity instead to resign, thereby keeping his full pension (instead of only receiving the money he put into the pension fund, not the matching taxpayer dollars). Cleverly (you don’t manage to molest children for decades without being clever) Brandt resigned. He was not officially “fired.”

There is nothing the union system won’t do to protect scum like Berndt.

Yeah, the LAUSD is all about the children it purportedly serves. Serves up to pedophiles, basically. I’d rather spend the rest of my working days behind a grocery store cash register than work for such a despicable school district.

Do not tell me “it’s only one sick individual.” The system protects his kind. It protects every single worthless teacher within it, including the most depraved. It is set up to suck in taxpayer money and pension incompetent, even criminal, employees regardless of their worth. And any truly exceptional, dedicated new teacher attempting to work in LAUSD schools hasn’t a prayer of keeping a job in tough economic times–they are the first to go while the longtime worthless ones are cemented in, until they want to leave and get their full pensions. The quality of your work means nothing.

The LAUSD is corrupt to the core. If you are part of it and part of the UTLA union, no matter how good a teacher you might be, you are part of that corruption. You are supporting it by your membership.

You might as well be an accomplice to Berndt’s crimes.

And if you are a parent who believes that sending your child  off to a public school five days a week ensures his or her safety, that you don’t have to be very aware of what kind of people are teaching your child, and what is going on in your child’s classroom, think again.

Pay attention, ask questions, listen to your child, be involved, and when something seems wrong to you, demand answers. It’s called parenting.

A truly monstrous crime

Today’s post is not for the squeamish. Please be aware that what I’m about to go over is almost unbelievable in its depravity.

I am so angry right now, it’s actually hard to type.

Los Angeles teacher charged with lewd acts

Allegations against a veteran Miramonte Elementary instructor leave many parents shocked and angry. The probe that led to 23 counts involving kids 7 to 10 began after disturbing photos were reported.

In the fall of 2010, a drugstore photo technician was running a batch of 35-millimeter film when a disturbing image tumbled out of the machine — a child, blindfolded with a white cloth and gagged with clear packing tape. From that first photograph, detectives spent the next year following a trail that led them to a South Los Angeles elementary school.

They say they found acts of staggering depravity.

There were more photos, it turned out — 400 more, traced to an apartment in nearby Torrance, then to a bustling

schoolhouse in South Los Angeles. There, officials alleged Tuesday, a veteran third-grade teacher sought sexual gratification by spoon-feeding his semen to his students.

Mark Berndt, 61, a teacher at Miramonte Elementary School in the community of Florence-Firestone, was charged with 23 counts of committing lewd acts on children.

Mark Berndt

Additional charges are likely, authorities said: Berndt had taught at Miramonte since 1979, and though test scores indicate that he was an average teacher, he was such a fixture that parents kept in touch with him after their children grew up, frequently inviting him to birthday parties and quinceañeras.

Berndt, who was being held in lieu of $2.3-million bail, regularly told his students that they were going to play a “tasting game,” in which children were blindfolded and, in some cases, gagged with tape, authorities say. The semen appears to have been ingested by the children on a blue plastic spoon and, according to one alleged victim’s father, on cookies.

The alleged victims were boys and girls ages 7 to 10.

“This occurred in his regular classroom with his students,” said Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Sgt. Dan Scott. “It wasn’t done in secrecy. The only secret was what the ‘game’ was really about.”

Berndt is also accused of placing a 3-inch-long Madagascar cockroach on his students’ faces and mouths.

Much remains unclear about the case. The acts that Berndt is charged with committing took place between 2005 and 2010, though detectives said they were still trying to determine how far back the alleged abuse occurred.

They are also trying to understand why no one — students, parents or fellow teachers — ever reported anything suspicious about Berndt’s class. School officials insist that they received no complaints about Berndt, something they say is alarming given the charges against him.

“I wonder how long he was doing this — and to how many kids,” said Arianna Perez, the mother of two Miramonte students.

“Lewd acts?” Is that what they’re calling it? Oh, please, how about acts of utterly depraved pedophiliac abuse?

Miramonte is located in a very poor area of Los Angeles–one of the poorest, riddled by gang activity. It’s been rated a “least effective school,” (a criteria that measures the difference between the expected progress of the student body and its actual performance, designed to estimate what the school contributes to students’ learning).

This is not a school where students are going to come from affluent, educated families. This is a school where 50% of the students are “migrant”, 85% receive free or reduced cost lunches, and nearly 98% are Hispanic. It’s been in the news before too, for another teacher related crisis.  One really must question the attentiveness to his staff of the principal running this school.

And when the question, “why did none of the children speak up” is asked, the answer is obvious. These children were easy prey. They are young. Many of them are not capable of speaking fluent English. They come from poverty, from families prone to moving back and forth across the border and within the state as labor opportunities dictate. In short, they are the easiest victims for this kind of sick predator.

I don’t know what’s worse, that this unmitigated monster was able to get away with abusing little children for decades? If you think this just started when he was 60, or 55, or 50, and isn’t something he’s been doing for his entire adult life, you–thankfully–know nothing about pedophiles. Undoubtedly his perverse behavior has its roots in his own teen years; only the nature of his victims (how do you find grown children of non-English speaking migrant families?) will make it difficult to determine just how many decades back his crimes extend.

Or is it worse that nobody, NOBODY, not anyone else working in that school supposedly had a clue he was sexually abusing child after child IN HIS CLASSROOM? I have spent enough time teaching in public schools to know how they operate. Teachers are terrible gossips. Everyone talks about each other. It never ceases to amaze me what gets mentioned in my presence; one lunch period in the teacher’s lounge is enough to get an earful. There is nothing that goes on when it comes to teachers which “nobody” else on campus knows about. Nothing that happens repeatedly in classrooms remains hidden from all the other teachers. What can and does happen is a lot of willful ignorance, a lot of turning a blind eye, a lot of “not my problem.”

Or perhaps the worst thing (apart from the abuse itself) is that Mark Berndt is going to draw a pension despite what he has done. He will receive nearly $4,000 a month for the rest of his life, regardless of whether he’s convicted or not. Oh yes, let’s not forget that his pension is guaranteed, and the damnable teacher’s union will make sure he gets every penny of it even if he sexually abused dozens–or hundreds–of the very children in his care.

If there was any justice on earth he’d be shot like the danger to his own species he is.

Unfortunately, we live in a time where the Mark Berndts, and the Roland Pierres and the Francisco Olivares and the Edgar Freidrichs, and who knows how many other twisted pedophiles can molest children, be protected by their union, and go on to draw a comfortable pension after sexually abusing the very children they were hired to teach.

Meanwhile Governor Moonbeam Brown insists we must raise taxes to provide more money for the schools.

California now faces a $13-billion budget deficit. But December revenues were strong enough that the state dodged automatic cuts that could have trimmed a week from the K-12 school year.

Education is the biggest item in the state budget, and the spending plan the governor will release next month assumes billions in additional revenues from passage of his tax initiative.

That even one person like Mark Berndt should receive taxpayer money after victimizing children is a crime itself.  If the people of California had any sense at all, they’d refuse to give one more dime toward “education” until the entire public school system is overhauled. At the very least, the very least, provision should be made that any teacher convicted as a sex criminal be stripped of his pension upon conviction.

Yeah, they’ll do that when donkeys fly.

(Edited because I just found out Berndt’s pension–which he is even now receiving–is over $3,800 per month. Disgusting.)

Afraid we don’t have a sense of humor

I am sure it’s all kinds of wrong that I find this laughable.

Bristol-based animation banner Aardman is to alter a scene in its upcoming stop motion 3D pic Band of Misfits in the wake of objections from leprosy groups including Lepra Health In Action and the International Federation of Anti-Leprosy Associations (ILEP).

…In the trailer, the Grant-voiced Pirate Captain lands on a ship demanding gold, but is told by a crew member: “Afraid we don’t have any gold old man, this is a leper boat. See.” After issuing the explanation, the sailor’s arm drops off.

Leprosy groups expressed concern that the scene could increase the stigma and discrimination felt by people suffering from leprosy.

Aardman has said it will change the scene in the wake of the objections.

An official statement from the Bristol-based animation house says it had no intention of upsetting sufferers of the disease.

“After reviewing the matter, we decided to change the scene out of respect and sensitivity for those who suffer from leprosy.”

According to the World Health Organization, about 213,000 people worldwide actually have leprosy, mostly in Asia and Africa. Out of a global population of over 7 billion, that’s like, what, .3%? It’s easily treatable and curable–nobody needs to lose body parts from it anymore.

20% of us are crazy

According to a report from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, one in five Americans is mentally ill.

One in five Americans experienced some sort of mental illness in 2010…About 5 percent of Americans have suffered from such severe mental illness that it interfered with day-to-day school, work or family. Women were more likely to be diagnosed with mental illness than men (23 percent of women versus 16.9 percent of men)

That’s right, the U.S. government thinks that 20% of us are crazy. Especially we women.

Of course, it’s the government, so who are they to point fingers.

Working as I do in a grocery store, I’m inclined to believe the statistic, in fact, I think it might be understating things a bit. Witness the customer last night who informed me “You know I do not want any of my items scanned.”

“I didn’t know that,” I responded patiently, “But now I do.”

“Well you should remember me,” she claimed.

Oh, I will, lady, I will, and I’ll blog about you later. Particularly about your wild-eyed insistence that nothing you are purchasing, including three bags of rice cakes–what the heck kind of food is that, it looks like disks of packing material, and you’re worried about what a bar code scanner will do to it?!–be exposed to the little red laser light of the bar code scanner. It’s a laser, it’s not an x-ray, it’s not going to alter the DNA of your canned garbanzo beans, or destroy the vitamin content of your  broccoli. It’s nothing more than reflected light.

But ohhKAY. I’ll hand key in each twelve digit code on each of your items, and when the customers waiting behind you in line get pissy because of how much time it’s taking me to complete your purchase, well  lady, it’ll be YOUR FAULT. Just don’t be trying to pontificate upon the deadliness of store scanners to me as I work, because day-um, I’M TRYING TO KEY IN SEVERAL HUNDRED NUMBERS HERE in a ridiculous effort to humor your baseless neurosis.

Just another bat crap crazy customer in a town full of them.

Speaking of which, I’m fascinated by the venom customers have recently been directing toward Paula Deen.

Paula Deen, if you are unfamiliar with her name, is a Southern woman who has managed to craft a highly successful career out of little more than her innate Southern charm and basic Southern cooking. She has cooking shows on Food Network, a stack of cookbooks, and a line of products bearing her name.

She also has Type II Diabetes, which she recently revealed some three years after learning of it.

That’s where the anger comes in–apparently there’s something shocking and scandalous about a person hiding a condition that, if announced, would basically negate everything lucrative about her career (i.e. “The food I’ve been telling you to cook will Ruin Your Health”).

Because she revealed her condition at the same time she announced she’d become a spokesperson for the drug company that produces the drug used to treat her condition, well, that was a little too obviously self serving for many people. In the Grocery Store Where I Work, we sell cooking magazines, among them one of Paula’s which happened to be positioned right next to my cash register.   As customers have passed it, they’ve offered various remarks ranging from a gleeful “She’s in trouble now” to a full blown screed against her that reminded me of a high school romance gone sour. It was quite similar to this:

“Shame on you Paula!” one commenter fumed. “[Y]ou waited three years to divulge your illness while still promoting your health deteriorating ways. Your son then gets his own ‘healthy cooking gig’ and THEN you reveal you are diabetic signing a contract for millions! ETHICS, SCRUPLES, and TRUE LOVE FOR YOUR FOLLOWERS is something you DO LACK!”

As I said, this venom baffles me. It ought not, I suppose, if I consider the fact that these unhappy souls are “FOLLOWERS” of the woman. To me (as I explained to the angry customer who all but demanded that I share her ire) Paula Deen is a TV personality. Like everything else there, her appearance on TV is designed to part the viewer from money. The reason the network gives her airtime is to push the viewer to buy everything she endorses, and anything advertised during her shows.

“But when people watch her, they want what she has,” my customer complained. “She’s looks like she has it all, this comfortable happy life. And she’s made so much money. She’s probably invested it, and even if she goes off the air, she’ll live really well. She should suffer for what she’s done.”

Huh? Is this some odd twist on the 99% vs. 1% animosity? Maybe, but I think there’s more going on than simple class envy. I think my customer revealed a lot about her own self. She wanted to be Paula Deen. She watched Paula’s shows (and probably tried to cook her recipes) thinking that if she could be just like Paula she’d be happier. And now that she sees Paula isn’t perfect, well, what now? Now we hate Paula? Now we’re happy that she’s sick?

That’s really sad. That’s even sadder than Paula having diabetes. Come on, do we really want to be happy about someone’s illness? Seriously?

I believe that all television shows at the core are designed to get people to spend money. So anything I view on TV–including the news (yes, even FOX News)–I view first and foremost as entertainment, understanding that marketing is going on while I’m being entertained. I am not trying to find a god to worship on TV, far from it, not even do I seek a person to emulate.

Though I’ve never cared for Paula Deen’s cooking (I wasn’t raised in the south, and her recipes are way too high fat and high calorie for my taste) I do enjoy some Food Network shows,  Alton Brown’s Good Eats, in particular. I’ve learned a lot about cooking from him, but I don’t want to be him. I don’t watch his show and think, even subconsciously, I want that kind of life. Not even when he did the “Feasting on Asphalt” series. Much as I’d truly love to take a food-centric motorcycle road trip, watching him do that was simply entertainment to me.

For me, watching Alton Brown on TV is about laughing while learning how to dry my own beef jerky (easier than you’d think) and smiling as I learn why the order of ingredients is important in biscuit making (perfect biscuits continue to elude me).

When Alton began advertising Welch’s Grape Juice, I grinned wryly and thought, “Well now, there’s a nice side income for the guy.”

My appreciation of Alton did not make me want to buy Welch’s product, nor did I think it was a better (or worse) product because Alton was touting it. But that’s just me. I view celebrity endorsements as nothing more than a blatant attempt to convince me to spend money.

If Alton Brown revealed that he was being treated for cancer, was now a spokesman for a cancer treatment drug, and had given up all meat products after a decade of showing viewers how to brine turkeys, jerk beef, and pull pork, well, I’d think that was odd and kind of sad, but really, it wouldn’t change how I feel about meat or the man.

It’s television, people. If you’ve lost the ability to distinguish between real life and TV shows, don’t blame TV personalities, blame your own unhealthy fixation with them.

And get over the paranoia about bar code scanners already. If you’re going to worry about them, why not worry about the laser that identifies your body when it approaches the doors of the grocery store, and triggers the doors to open. Every time you walk in and out, that laser hits you. Be afraid, be very afraid, and stay away!

Is “Medical Ethics” an oxymoron?

On this day twenty five years ago, I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. She was (and still is) an amazing, precious gift from God. For a quarter of a century she has brought measureless love and joy to our lives. She also happened to be born with Spina Bifida.

I remember within a week of her birth being given the “Gerber Baby talk” (that’s what other moms in the NICU of the “Famous Big City Hospital” called  it) by a social worker, who told me that I was no doubt disappointed because I did not give birth to a “perfect baby,” and that being depressed and miserable would be understandable. That my daughter would probably never walk, nor talk, and her eyesight would undoubtedly be compromised along with her intellect. That it would be “normal” were I to grieve the loss of the perfect baby I’d undoubtedly wanted. That it would be understandable if I did not want this baby.

None of that was true. Not my feelings about my baby–I absolutely adored her from the minute I first held her–nor her projected development. She learned to talk just fine, to walk with the assistance of leg braces, her eyesight is a hawklike 20/10 in both eyes, and she can beat me at Scrabble.

So much for those medical prognostications.

Today, on the anniversary of her birth, I happened across this news story: Mom says mentally disabled tot heartlessly denied transplant.

Amelia “Mia” Rivera has Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome, a complex genetic disorder that causes mental and physical impairments, and her family said that the 3-year-old will die if she does not get a kidney in the next six months to a year.

Mia’s mother Chrissy Rivera has said the family is willing to donate a live organ, but Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia has reportedly told her that they will not recommend transplantation for the toddler because of her disabilities.

Rivera blogged about her daughter’s plight last Friday, and now more than 20,000 online supporters from 15 states are petitioning the hospital to give the toddler the kidney they say she needs to survive.

“I didn’t think it was going to be an issue,” said Rivera, a 35-year-old high school English teacher from southern New Jersey who has two other children, aged 11 and 6.

When the family went to CHOP last week to discuss the transplant, Rivera said she “thought we were just finding out how transplant works and how we could be a donor.”

“But then, I was told we couldn’t because she was mentally retarded,” she said. “Those were the exact words on a piece of paper.”

Chrissy Rivera shares the entire experience on the Wolf-Hirschorn website.

I say the words and ask the questions I have been avoiding.

“So you mean to tell me that as a doctor, you are not recommending the transplant, and when her kidneys fail in six months to a year, you want me to let her die because she is mentally retarded? There is no other medical reason for her not to have this transplant other than she is MENTALLY RETARDED!”

“Yes. This is hard for me, you know.”

My eyes burn through his soul as if I could set him on fire right there. “Ok, so now what? This is not acceptable to me. Who do I talk to next?”

“I will take this back to the team. We meet once a month. I will tell them I do not recommend Amelia for a transplant because she is mentally retarded and we will vote.”

“And then who do I see?”

“Well, you can then take it to the ethics committee but as a team we have the final say. Feel free to go somewhere else. But it won’t be done here.”

They both get up and leave the room.

As I read Crissy’s words, 25 years rolled away, and I saw again the expression on the face of the young intern determined to do a spinal tap on my baby out of sheer curiosity, his arrogant certainty shifting to baffled dismay when I adamantly refused to allow it. I heard again the voice of the neurosurgeon who led a troop of medical students into an exam room with no warning, callously displaying my daughter as case study, speaking as though I were not present at all. I vividly remembered all the times I demanded explanations, insisted upon access to medical charts, and fought to get the best possible treatment for my baby.

In reading her words,  felt the anger and the tears and the determination of Chrissy Rivera as though I were experiencing them first hand. And my heart hurts for her now, even as I am cheering  on her determination to advocate for her daughter. Chrissy Rivera is a strong woman, and I have no doubt she is an amazing advocate for her daughter.

It is ugly, cruel and wrong though that the Riveras should have to mount such a fight. It’s horrible that Mia should be judged unworthy of a transplant because she’s not “normal,” because her disability poses challenges in the future.

But it’s not surprising. We are living in a time when getting rid of those who are less than perfect is a socially acceptable goal.

God help the Riveras as they seek treatment for their beloved daughter.

God help us all.

Amelia "Mia" Rivera

If you want to speak out on behalf of Mia, you can sign the online petition begun here: Change.org. At the very least, share her story. The more notice this story gets the more likely such obscene medical “standards” will be challenged and ultimately changed.

To be silent is to accept the unacceptable.

Parenting: FAIL

Working part time in a grocery store gives me ample opportunity to observe people. Because I want to be a full time teacher, and I’m a mother (if I had to define myself, to state my primary role, it would be “mom”) I pay special attention to the dynamic between parents and children.

Over time I’ve noticed several things. One is that you can tell a lot about parents by their behavior toward their children in a grocery store environment.

Most people in grocery stores are oblivious to everything but their shopping. They are focused on purchasing food and household supplies, a boring but necessary task most people want to finish as quickly as possible. They are not concerned with making a good impression, in fact they’re usually unaware that anyone–especially the store staff–is observing them. So who they are–who they really are–tends to be on full display during the time they are in the store.

For example, a 30-something mother accompanied by a young daughter about 8 years old.

This mother’s voice caught my attention before she’d actually reached my register. “Stop that,” she said, and the tone was annoyed, distracted, and more than a bit cold. It matched the woman, whose designer clothes, manicured nails, carefully made up face and lavish jewelry said “I spare no expense on myself.” Her daughter was similarly clothed in designer casual apparel including a pair of white boots adorned with sparkling silver decorations. The daughter’s expression was only slightly less bored and haughty than her mother’s (interestingly I have found that children’s expressions frequently mirror their parents’).

As I finished ringing up the items of the customer ahead of them, the little girl stepped up to my counter and demanded (her tone was more demanding than questioning) “Are you talking to her?”

Before I could respond, her mother snapped, “Don’t talk like that, it’s rude. Say ‘Are you talking to my mother,’ not ‘her‘.”

Ahhh…ohKAY. The rudeness was  interrupting my conversation with someone else and not saying “excuse me.” Whatever.

I stared back at the child and simply said “No,” then finished the prior transaction and began to ring up her mother’s items.

The child turned away from me and began rummaging through a container of lip balm tubes on the counter across from mine, where one of our store’s head cashiers (a young woman in her early 20s) was working. As I rang up her mother’s purchases I kept one eye on the child, who proceeded to remove a selection of lip balms, looking around as if to determine whether she was being watched. There was something very furtive about her behavior, especially as she glanced over her shoulder at me, then moved her hand clutching three lip balm tubes away from the counter and toward herself.

So I said, “Honey, please put those back unless you’re going to buy them.”

The girl dropped the tubes on the counter as her mother looked briefly at her and said in a bored tone, “Stop that.” No effort was made to determine what the child was doing; mom was more interested in sorting through the contents of her oversized designer purse.

The child looked at me again, reached into a jar of honey sticks next to the jar of lip balm, and removed one stick. She then dropped it on the floor and (I am not exaggerating) she raised one booted foot and stomped on the honey stick.

At that point I said sharply, “Please don’t do that! Pick it up, please.” As the child bent to pick up the honey stick, I requested, “Don’t put it back, hand it to me. I need to throw it away.”

The mother had just taken her receipt from me, and her expression went from haughty to annoyed. “I’ll pay for it,” she said, irritation clear in her tone.

I should have said “Thank you” and taken her money, but I told her, “No, I just don’t want it back in with the others now that it’s been stepped on.”

I was thoroughly in parent mode; I expected her to scold her child for the bad behavior. What I got instead was a glare from both mother and child as they turned to leave the store. In parting, the mother snapped over her shoulder at me, “Why don’t you go have a cocktail or something.”

My bagging assistant stared after her in shock, asking me “Did you hear that?”

Wondering if I’d somehow precipitated the situation, I approached the head cashier who had witness the entire interaction. She told me that she was glad I’d spoken as I had; the child’s behavior from the outset had so startled her she couldn’t immediately verbalize a response.

It’s obvious exactly where the kids I work with in middle and high school get their sense of entitlement, their belief that common rules of behavior and respectful conduct don’t apply to them.

Communication problems

Today’s winner of the “Aging is Such an Adventure,” award:

The elderly gentleman accompanied by two middle aged women who came through my checkout line at the Store Where I Work, and repeatedly explained–before he paid for anything–that he wanted his groceries put into two separate carts in order to avoid pushing one overly full shopping cart.

Yes, it would have been simple for him to pay for the groceries, let us bag them and put half the bags in one cart, and then put the other half of the bags in a second cart. But that’s not what he wanted. He wanted me to understand that exactly between the rutabagas and the white onions, I was to stop, bag the groceries I’d already scanned, put them into a cart, then continue scanning and bagging the second half of his order. He even put two–not one, but two–rubber dividers between the items on the conveyer belt to indicate precisely where we were to pause and pack. The way he verbalized this request was rather convoluted, but I finally understood what he wanted, and proceeded to do what he requested.

Unexpected confusion ensued when my bagger (a very capable and quick young woman) began placing filled bags into the first cart. The gentleman looked at the cart and said “What is this? Whose things are these?!”

“Those are yours,” my bagger explained.

“But I wanted them in two separate carts!” he complained.

It took several moments and several tries to explain that we were doing what he wanted; this was part of the first cart’s groceries.

The transaction went downhill from there, with him questioning where the pinto beans were (first cart) why the tangerines he’d selected were so small (“They are Clementines; if you want bigger ones, we have Satsumas, would you like someone to go get them instead? Sir? Sir??”) and importance being placed on lentils being a certain size because his wife made soup with “the big ones” (if lentils come in different sizes that’s news to me). The two women with him alternated between cajoling and commanding as he drew a simple 5 minute purchase into a 15 minute ordeal of miscommunication and misunderstanding.

Then it all became clear when one of the women complained “Dad, you don’t have your hearing aid on. It’s impossible to shop with you when you don’t wear your hearing aid.”