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March 31, 2006 ( Friday, March 31, 2006 ) Sometimes I like living in a small town. It gives me such a great oppurtunity to study society. Take for instance the weather. My favourite is when it's sunny in town yet you can see it snowing on the mountains. I love the sense of chaos that it creates with the general public. People walking around saying "when do you think it'll hit?" or "I heard on the news that it'll break up before tonight." You can see people staring at the mountain tops, with that look of impending doom, like a spaceship is slowly making it's decent. People rush around to get their errands done in time before "it" hits. It reminds me of a lame disaster movie. If the snow (or rain) does start to fall, the panic worsens. "Here it comes" you'll hear people saying in coffee shops and parking lots. Rain reminds me of working at Tim Hortons. The spring of 2002 I remember it rained for 6 days straight, non-stop. I remember because I worked 5 of those days. It felt like being inside an aquarium. Inside the glass, water streaking down the window. I remember standing at the counter, blankly looking out to the street. Waterlogged people, bravely making out of their houses long enough to make it to Tim Hortons. Gotta have that double double. I think one of the ugliest things in the world is garbage that has been wind-pushed against a fence. It reminds me of some sort of gross billboard, advertising what slobs most people are. Faded from the sunlight and soaked from the rain, it's clinging to the web of metal. In all my years of walking to and from places I've never seen anybody litter anything larger than a pop can, yet there lay 2L pop bottles and broken kitchen chairs. I hate..HATE..people who litter. To look down into the creek on my way to work and see ducks swimming in the water, trying to avoid the dam that's been created by pop cans and plastic bags. One of these days I'm going to show up at work, my pants soaked up to the knee. "I was saving the ducks" I'll say. And my reputation as a tree hugging, granola eating, hippy child will dig it's roots in deeper. One of my favourite things to do is analyze people's purchases at the grocery store. I love looking (discreetly of course) at what people have decided to take home. Sometimes it makes sense. Like today, the older couple in front of me buying four boxes of All Bran cereal. Pretty self-explanatory. The woman behind me however, she was buying a mop and some greeting cards. I wonder which one she came for. Was she wandering the aisles with a mop and suddendly thought "I need cards!" or was she thumbing through birthday cards and all of a sudden the image of a mop popped into her head. Perhaps she didn't even come for either of those and once she gets home she'll realize that the whole reason she went to the store was for mustard. Once at 7-11 on a friday night, Scott and I stood in line behind a college aged guy buying a slush and a box of condoms. Now, it's pretty obvious that he wasn't pouring his slush when out of the blue he thought "I need condoms". The slush is a buffer. It helps alleviate the embarrasement of handing over a box of condoms to the older woman in the red uniform. I think I read too much into things sometimes.... It's funny how change can create so many different emotions in people. The safeway is under major renovations and there are so many reactions. Some people are mad. LIVID. "WHERE IS THE DAMN SOUP? I CAN'T FIND SOUP!". Some people are fearful. "oh no, I don't where the crackers are anymore" Some people don't care about the location of food, they're impressed with the ambiance. "look at the floors! I love the paint!" I'm probably a mixture of a few different reactions. Panic if I can't find what I'm looking for, followed by relief that I found it, and then panic again because I'm scared I won't be able to find it next time. A sense of wonder, who knows what's down the next aisle...it's....CEREAL! THEY MOVED THE CEREAL! WOW....it's like a poor man's version of disneyland. Society can be fun sometimes. |
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