Not the Tremblin' Kind

I've had such a quiet day. Monday is always a metaphorical desk clearing day. I fall back to to my baseline activity level of being able to do very little. There is so much controversy about self-management in ME, I often give myself no peace wondering if I should be trying harder to do more. Yet my body craves rest like a wilted pot plant craves water. On Mondays (more than any other day) I try to listen to it and give my mind a rest too.

I remember once needing to get a taxi for a few blocks and an ex boyfriend saying to me in exasperation, 'Oh, for god's sake, how tired can you be?' And that's it in a nutshell. It's nothing to do with tiredness. It's some kind of cellular meltdown.

By evening I struggled down to the local supermarket. A middle-aged supervisor woman was yelling at one of the check-out boys in front of the customers. He had run out of change and there was a queue at his till.

'Don't stop serving,' she shouted.

'I've run out of change,' he said.

'You should have rung for change. Don't stop serving!'

'I rang before.'

'No you never,' she insisted for all around to hear.

What a sledge hammer phrase 'No you never' is. She really humiliated the poor guy, shouting further about how he was holding up the queue. I wanted to challenge her and say that, as a customer, I found this unfair and uncomfortable. I was a coward though. I thought she'd lay into me too. I wondered if I'd be mature enough in a few years to say something. (I regret being one of the 'neutrals' at school who would see kids getting taunted or bullied, yet we'd never dare to step in).

I paid for my biscuits and told the guy at the till that I thought he had been shouted at unfairly. 'It does'ny bother me,' he said. Whether true or false, I thought his response was stoical and masculine. I thought good on him for not letting his bottom lip tremble.

-C