Alms Giving

The hunger had been building in me for a while.  I had an assignment to complete, and I finally began to enjoy its puzzling nature, and to accept that this wasn’t going to be another case I could crack in a couple of minutes.  “I could program the cross validation across the entire sample range, instead of using all the observations”, my stats inner voice was kicking in on overdrive to the point where I could actively hear myself speak in my own mind.  But my seemingly stroke of genius was greeted by yet another frustrating “error, lengths do not match” respond from my statistics program, and I gave in to my hunger and went to get some food.

“Maybe if I just coerce the variable to equal lengths…” My thoughts and my body continued to wander aimlessly as I searched for suitable food to satisfy both my yearning for catharsis and my grumbling bowels. I had given up on peanut butter and jelly pita sandwiches not too long ago, and tried to avoid yet another infringement of my economics studies on my thought processes in the form of a cost-benefit analysis incorporating taste, walking distance, cost and familiarity into my decision as to where to eat.  And besides, today was statistics, not econ. So I settled for the closest Subway – low cost, familiar, close by and at least somewhat versatile.  

Profusely lip syncing to Sia’s “Elastic Heart”, over-enunciating each syllable just to get a response from my co-pedestrians ended up assisting me in avoiding all eye contact across the busy streets of London. Its melodious tune intertwined with darker lyrics, for a pop song at least, finally allowed me stop thinking of myself as a master of the Matrix for writing three lines of code continuously, and to enjoy the pleasant anonymity that a city produces.

“Could you spare some change sir?” The panhandler had interrupted my favorite contemplative line in the song with his glazing eyes. I Suddenly realized that I had matched his glare with my own and that in response I would have to actively contemplate whether I would actually pull out some change from my pocket, or just fake the casual “I don’t have any” glance with the compulsory shoulder shrug. I had some change, I knew I had some. But I went through the entire enactment of scavenging my pockets to find a wayward coin, if only to buy some time to fully remember or recognize whether I really wanted to give alms to the toothless man who austerely sat just below me.

You see, just the other day I had also been approached by a seemingly transient older fellow, who asked for 14 pee. It was such an appealingly low and yet specific amount that cried out a purpose, a cause. Before I could even ask why he needed exactly 14 pence, and not 16 or 12 my hands immediately reached into my right pocket and pulled out a 20 pee coin. It felt so obligatory to give that man something that he obviously needed at that moment.  But here I was, confronted by an ostensibly similar situation but my hands reacted differently. As they aimlessly searched for a coin that had already been found, they were retrieved literally empty-handed as I shrugged in an apologetic yet glib expression. “Sorry” I said, and marched on to retrieve my £3 reward in the form of a Subway sandwich.

 As I stood there contemplating whether I should get a chicken tikka flatbread or a meatball on 9-grain wheat, I felt saturated by guilt. My days as a wayfarer, or at least a wanderer, had left me flummoxed me and I wondered how I could so bashfully deny this young man of something as petty as spare change in such a time of need. My dormant consumerist rebuttal of “he’s probably gonna drink it away anyway” left me unfazed, and I allowed the remorse to consume me instead. The queue of younger girls in pressed British school-girl outfits slowly dispersed as they each made a decision of spicy Italian or BLT, and I settled on a chicken tikka, but with 9-grain wheat, and awaited.

As I left the shop, I paused. Our eyes met once again, but this time he had no expectations of me. I had turned him down already, and a quick visit to a corporate deli would not have changed my mind about him. I imagined him imagining me to be a heartless aspiring capitalist just as I pulled into my pockets once again. Quickly, without a fuss this time, I pulled out the few coins I had in there and gave them to him, intentionally not selecting the coins of smaller magnitude. “A good day to you sir”, I said as I repositioned my headphones once again beneath my hat.

Sia’s song was just reaching its ending crescendo - “Be my friend, wrap me up” she whispered in my ear.

“Hold me, wrap me up

Unfold me, I am small

I’m needy, warm me up

And breathe me…”

And yeah, the song was on repeat.

Peanut Butter

I walked into the grocery store the other day to buy peanut butter, so I could eat it with some carrots later that day.  In the peanut butter aisle I was assaulted with the amount of choice I faced. I found four different brands of peanut butter – Skippy, Whole Earth, Meridian and Sun Pat. Each brand offered me at least two options – chunky, creamy and some even offered a “smooth” type of peanut butter (not quite sure if that was any different from creamy).  The difference in prices and branding was sending me a clear signal of what each type of peanut butter meant: Skippy was telling me – “this is the flavor of your childhood.  It’s true we’re more expensive than the off brand, but you’re worth it”, Whole Earth was telling me- “if you’re concerned about your body and even only somewhat environmentally conscientious, this is the peanut butter you want”, Meridian was telling me “you don’t have to compromise on flavor for an environmentally safe choice”, and price-wise placed itself just below both Skippy and Whole Earth; and Sun Pat looked like a cheap imitation of Skippy, assuming that pricing itself at 60 percent of the cost of all the others would distinguish it anyway.

The question that these brands had all demanded of me was – which type of consumer am I? Up until a few years ago, as a relatively low income individual I never had to ask myself this question, since I knew that I was a consistent off brand consumer and I always chose the cheapest item on the shelf.  I couldn't really afford to be environmentally aware and pay a social justice/eco-friendly tax on my consumer goods – I just felt that I didn't have the available income to even ponder such a question.  I justified this easily by remembering the hours and days of volunteering for the very causes these brands were raising their prices for. But now that I volunteer less and have a little bit more available income I decided not to strictly consume from the bottom of the shelf. But what shelf should I choose from?

I paced the aisle hesitantly, trying to define myself to myself.  I picked up the jar of Skippy and was flushed with memories of my mom making me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in a pita for school (which received ridicule from all my friends because PB&J was not a thing in Israel). But as I looked at the price again, I immediately felt guilty to spend such an amount on something like peanut butter.  The price itself didn't signal – “I am a luxury item!” but its relative price was higher than others, and all I was paying for was a memory of childhood that was accompanied with mild thoughts of pubescent derision. There was no added value here. There was no contribution to my health or my planet, so why would I pay a higher price for something like that? So I picked up the jar of Whole Earth peanut butter instead to see if I liked how I felt about myself as an “organic do-gooder” type of consumer. I immediately shuddered at the thought of being that guy – a cliché of himself; the guy who used to be a social activist, who fought for something greater than himself but gave up, and now buys the Whole Earth brand to make up for the guilt he experiences of being a cog in the capitalist system of consumer oppression and simply accepts that this is his contribution to the world. Had I given up on myself, on change, on being meaningful in exchange for the quaint feeling of consuming a quasi-guilt free product? I returned the jar to the shelf and walked around for a second to calm down.

I returned to the peanut butter shelf once again, expecting my arduous elimination process to yield at least some relief from the burden of making a choice. It was only peanut butter after all. I had decided to settle on either Meridian or Sun Pat. And as I browsed through the selection, I once again remembered that Sun Pat had not been an option at all, since I no longer considered myself a “bottom shelf” consumer. But Meridian seemed like such a lackluster choice – it felt dreary and uninspiring (yes, I am still talking about peanut butter here). I was pushed into a compromise I was not yet ready to settle for, and my eyes wandered across the shelf to suddenly see Skippy once again in a new light.  Maybe I really do deserve it, why wouldn't I “explore the possibilities” as their slogan implored of me to do. Explore! I am an explorer! Or at least I want to see myself as such.

The gentle caress of a decision began wrapping me in its tenderness, unravelling in my gut.  I envisioned the mouth-watering explosions I would experience in the chunkiness that is Skippy, combined with the delicate crunch of a carrot as my evening snack, and I picked up the Skippy from the shelf and began walking to the counter. I had made a choice and it was liberating.

As I enter the queue (this is London after all) and wait patiently for other people to pay, the doubt and questioning that had engulfed me and dissipated emerged with a vengeance. Nooooo! I was frozen almost mid-step, unable to proceed even though the line had moved on and the polite Brits behind me gave me a glaring look of “WTF dude, the queue is moving, get with it”. Was I really a Skippy person? What did I do that made me feel like I deserved this holy of holies of the peanut butter selection?  At what point did I accept being an entitled asshole who feels that Skippy, of all the acceptable choices in that shelf, was not only what I found to be a justified choice but who I was?  And besides, when did I agree to be manipulated into this thought process in which I evaluate a product based on the signal it’s sending me as a consumer? Was that all I was, a consumer? Maybe I shouldn't let peanut butter belittle me like that.

I looked up to see a three foot gap in the consecrated queue, a transgression no self-respected Englishman would accept in a conciliatory fashion. I submissively advanced to find myself next in line at the counter. This was it, the moment of truth, was I really a Skippy person?  I was deeply contemplating the gravity of such a decision about who I was and how I defined myself. And as I was wrestling with what felt at that moment like the very core of my being  for some reason William Wallace (in the form of Mel Gibson, of course) descended from the ceiling with an endless line of Scotsmen behind him, ready to follow through on his promise of liberation and waltz into battle. His eyes glimmered with the weight of battle, death and destruction at his doorstep and bellowed, at me, “you can take my life, but you can never take MY FREEDOOOM”. 

Well okay William, that kinda gives me some perspective. It is only peanut butter...

I hastily and yet quietly exited the line (it’s a line goddamit, not a queue) and placed the jar of Skippy, and some of my self-esteem on the discount shelf. I walked out of the store ashamed, lonely and hungry, and wondered what I would eat now.

I was still hungry after all.