April 26, 2013
-
Steak Down His Pants
Having been an RN, I know some things which I advise others not to do, and one would be to endeavor to write something which shows fore thought after having taken medication, medication which I keep needing because I still have not defeated the airplane respiratory system terminator which grabs me on all plane trips these days, and why do I not go to a physician? I do not want to hear for the 2000th time that we are overly medicated with antibiotics, and time will cure this bug which has gone all over the map each week. It has toured the lungs by way of the bronchial trees. It has visited the little places like alveoli, and has knocked on the doors of air sacks which have long been dead from my father’s cigarette smoke, the blebs, as I remember them to be. Heading north, it has hit the esophagus, the trachea, and now it is sitting on the steps of the sinus and mucoid membranes of my head, going in for warm baths in the sinus cavities, and my tympanic membranes feel as if snakes are going to burst out of them at any minute. I am miserable, absolutely miserable, and the only good part of the whole frickin’ episode is that I am not hungry. My eyes sting and burn from the pollen, and the nares simply shut off and send guards with, “Keep out signs.” This is how horrible I feel physically, I feel so horrible my mother came again in a day dream to make me coffee, the coffee with cream and sugar, and God knows what else she put in it, for she always had that belief that she could, “Burn a cold out of us.” I told you before that she has been coming and that is not correct, for Mama died many years ago now, but I will swear she is trying to take care of me. I am going to send my physician in San Francisco an email, for I think it has about gone on long enough, so he can call something in. Physicians and nurses do not like to seek treatment, so the past few years of having a lot of interaction with regular care just does not fit what I consider to be my independent nature, but I am throwing down the gauntlet since I do not have any of Mamas regular stuff to kill us or the germs, which ever succumbed to death first, so now you get to hear again. I give up! This sinner cannot heal her self, and that was another Biblical term which some folks I know do not get that it was a metaphor for the spiritual. Alright Christian Science people are smart folks, and you can go in the reading rooms and have yourself a cup of coffee, but I do not believe you get the caffeine.
I think the highlight of this day though, was when on our news in Cincinnati which people still confuse with flying turkeys and WKRP, the old television faux Cincinnati, had as a news matter of the day that a gentleman had stuffed steaks down his pants at a nearby Kroger store. I found this to be degrading, and if his name gets out, and it will, because they caught him red handed! I was so disappointed that this station or any other station would carry this news, and were I not still under attack from the vectors just listed, then I would probably have laughed along with every one else.
Here are my thoughts. There are so many men who feel morally as if they are carrying steak in their pants each day behind a nicely tailored zipper that it seems appropriate that this thief would figure a few steaks would hardly be noticed, considering we have the finest beef walking around town daily who emphasize or take pride in their great proportions and wealth. Here was a man who probably has an arrest record already, for he was apt to be drunk or on drugs, and maybe he actually was hungry. He was apt to have been a little unkempt to have been followed, and he is sighted stuffing steaks down the front of his trousers. If he was a street person, those trousers probably carried other protein in the form of horrid little critters burrowed in his hair follicles, and who was ever going to take those steaks home after he put them where he did, and say, “Honey, get out the grill, for we’re going to grill up some steaks this evening, and invite the neighbors, for we can stretch them a little!” Worse, would the manager be saying, “Boys, there’s nothing wrong with these babies, for the cops made a clean sweep, so put ‘em back in the meat counter next to the A1,” or perhaps I am giving too much credit to an owner who honestly felt repackaging and putting them in the older meat section was better than losing the sell of however many steaks our hardened criminal could shove in and look natural coming out of a store.
Would they have called the police in to arrest him had he chosen salami or hot dogs? It is all beside the point to me, that I know stealing is wrong, but the man who shoves steaks down his pants has more problems than theft this society needs to take care of. He was probably going to take the back to a homeless shelter and give his buddies a bite or two, or could he have been taking them home out of shame that he could not provide for his family. I do not know, but what I see is the degradation of a person who is apt to be pretty down on his luck to be stealing like that, and could this store manager just not taken him aside and talked to him man to man and worked this out, telling him that he was giving him one chance, and put those in a bag, and I want you to remember that someone saw that you needed this day, and I am giving you a pass.
Stealing is wrong, and he was lucky not to be a poor Muslim where theft requires the hand that took something to be amputated among the under educated and hardened tribal groups where no one is going to get a pass, but we are a rich people. This man has a family, or I would expect that he does, and should I feel every thief in a grocery store should be looked over — In a case where it causes such shame to a person who has a family; I think there should be an accounting for the deed. Work a day at the loading dock, or sweep up broken milk cartons, but when a person is found in such a sorrowful position — Can we avoid making it everyone’s business and making a broken human being even more broken. It is cold in Cincinnati this day, but no one said he had a coat, and would it have made more sense to have used his coat as an implement for hiding his meal. If he had no coat, did anyone offer him one, so here goes Pollyanna endeavoring to save the criminal, but I just cannot help it.
It is even apt to waste court time, but most of all; Who was needing to be fed. How do you not make his children feel lower than worms if he has any? I do speak of victimless crimes, and this falls in that realm, and I can guarantee you that even if that man smelled like a dung heap, that had I been there, I would have begged to pay for his purchases and sent him along his way. The damned steaks may have been expensive, but we are America, and we collect food for the needy. We build altars for our dead, and I have been known to choose the best bananas, when you pull the two worst ones off a nice bunch and you want to make it right. I think the store would have gotten a lot more good press had they just acknowledged that this seemed beyond the usual crime. It wasn’t like back in our old town of Winchester, Tennessee when Mr. Gus Larkin and folks noticed that a Gypsy family came in and spread all over the store, so no one could keep up with what all they were taking, because the Gypsy women were carrying babies, and everytime the managers endeavored to put down the commotion of theft, then the nursing Gypsy Moms would expose their whole breast then the store stockers and baggers felt too embarrassed to face the women, for around the parts where I came from, a lot of people believe exposing breast is a fully private moment.
The story ended back at the old home store when news came that up around Tullahoma, pulling off the same crime, using breast to make gentle men and women feel they had to turn their heads; Real store security nailed the criminal in the police kind of way and put their sorry asses in jail for absolute thievery. Where will the story be tomorrow about our criminal and his sirloins or t bone steaks? My prayer is that if it winds up in court that Mr. Jeff Ruby or one of our other citizens who gives much back to the community will offer the judge money for the stolen and give the man a little work, just sweeping, catching frogs with fat legs for Mr. Ruby’s restaurants, but would they just let this one go, let the man have his meat and let his family eat some too, because, for the dollars it cost, I would argue that such a man needed more shame on his plate, nor does his family. Sometimes, if their lives are too dysfunctional, then it can be a door to receive needed counseling, connections with food pantries, as well as an opportunity to be treated within the mental health facilities. We can make a joke about every portion of the crime; “Was his meat solid or just half frozen,” or, “How was he going to get out of the store without someone wanting to measure that thing??” I can write humor in to dark places, and “Pinkhoneysuckle,” the book uses every opportunity to keep people laughing through their tears — So I will be the, “Kill Joy,” who had to stop laughing, for I will find human stories which are just a little to sad to tell.
Our Bishop of Rome, had he been there, I believe Blessed Frances that the crime was not the stolen steaks; No, it is that we always leave our poor the scraps and ground fatty ground meat from more cows than we can imagine. He would not only have paid the man’s debt, but he would have seen a need and filled it. We are all capable of doing pastoral work, of letting our hearts to be wide enough that no one should be hungry. Please do not go out and shop lift any thing this day, because you hope a person of faith will endeavor to rescue you, for I only wish to make the point that sometimes the need overwhelms the bottom line. In the book, “Angela’s Ashes,” there was a chapter about a Christmas when the whole family had no more way to make any food, so that Christmas Eve, the butcher showing how generous he was managed to find a sheep’s head to give the family, and they sat around as the mother tried to cook what was a disgusting sheep’s head, and sees her children endeavoring to find some marrow in the bones, for any good part had been cut away, and that Christmas was just among the most hurtful, for there was no work, and what the butcher gave to them was fit for a couple rogue dogs, Was this a gracious act from a kind butcher, I asked myself, and I realized what a lout the butcher was, that he knew he was going home to feast while a family without would almost choke on pieces which came from the pathetic sheep’s head. Remember such examples and let us not only give of ourselves but to give our best, not missing the chance to offer our forgiveness when appropriate and our best when needed This day, may we seek to protect those who are shamed.
Good Night from my partially open brain. I will clean up the blog when the critters I am coping with march on to another guest of, “The Friendly Skies.!!!
Barb
Barbara Everett Heintz, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” my book can be found on Amazon, Create Space, and Kindle
