People

Some days, I hate people. Sunday was particularly bad. After driving down from Phoenix, I pulled off the road to stop at Wal-Mart to buy flowers for my mother. On my way down the off-ramp, two SUVs on the frontage road decided "yield" did not apply to them, which resulted in my essentially having to stop on the off-ramp. At this point, one of them realized he'd fucked up and decided to hover in my blind spot. Horn honking convinced him he wans't helping.

It was like the demolition derby trying to get into Wal-Mart, where so many shopping carts had stacked up in the parking lot they had overflowed the cart coralls and sprawled halfway across the aisle. I found parking a considerable way away, hiked in, picked out a rose for my mother, and found the shortest line I could. Right behind somebody with some kind of a register problem and a couple arguing in Spanish over whether or not to buy dish towels.

And then something changed. The woman's body language changed to include me, and she said something to her husband, and waved me with my one little rose for my mother in front of them. I thanked them and took the offered space up the line, and probably blushed about a million shades of red. Why? Because every time I become completely disgusted with the human race, something little like this happens and just bursts that bubble, and I feel so embarassed for having forgotten that maybe there's something to this being human after all.

A ray of hope, like a single rose for my mother.