(American) Mentality or the Need for Compassion

Just before New Years I went out and bought myself a new pair of booty-style slippers at Winners. When I went to put them on later that night, I found shards of glass in the right shoe – little pieces, clear and colored, like from some ornament or decorative piece. I was shocked! I had cut my thumb earlier that day taking a shard of glass out of my sock. Now I knew the source. Images of glass falling out and onto the floor, where my son or daughter could cut themselves gave me shivers, so I wrapped them both back tightly in the bag and planned to return them to the store the next day.

I was angry and scared. How did glass end up in my slipper? Trying on slippers is something we consider relatively safe and don’t expect to end up bleeding from the encounter. Were more slippers “contaminated”, or was it just the pair I had bought?
On the way to the store I thought over about what I was going to do once I got there. Make a big stink? Call over the manager? Be angry? And, shouldn’t they owe me something other than just a new pair of slippers?
When I got to the counter, I told the teenaged clerk what had happened. Her colleague at the next counter leaned over and said, “Someone must have put it there on purpose” (oh, that’s reassuring!), then asked, “are you sure you don’t want to just vacuum them?” “Ah...no.”
Luckily, my clerk was slightly more understanding and took back the slippers. She asked what I wanted. I went and got another pair, checked to make sure there was nothing lurking in the bottom, then simply exchanged them. And then I left.

But what did I want? I was thinking a free chocolate bar, or a 5$ gift card would have been nice. Something for my pains and troubles. I mean, wasn’t I owed something for what I went through? Ah. Why is it that I think that? Is that my “American-ness” shining through? My American mentality? You OWE me! You have to PAY! I realize that this is what I had learned growing up. When something goes wrong, then people owe you...something. Suing people left and right for the slightest slight to our persons. Okay, I wasn’t about to sue Winners, and in the end I didn’t even call over a manager or insinuate a little gift of chocolate would ease my pains. But what would have been enough? What was it I was asking for? Hmmm. How about a sincere apology. Compassion as compensation. A heart to heart connection. I believe it would have been enough. Compassion. An understanding. A connection...

Just yesterday I was in the supermarket. I had to go to use the bathroom, and when I’m about to leave, with Phoenix in the cart in the front, and Kian in the bottom tier of the grocery part, I start to back out. Kian, I realize much too late, isn’t quite in yet, and he flips over and hits his head hard on the floor. A huge egg-sized lump appears instantly. Both kids crying. I’m not quite sure what to do, so I go down to the pharmacy and ask if they have an ice pack. The gentleman gives me a hard frozen plastic rectangle. Nothing to wrap it in, and it’s too hard to cradle my son’s head. I tell him it’s not working, and offer to pay for something if he has anything that could work better. He goes and gets me something, drops it on the counter, and doesn’t even offer to help me with it. He tells me it’s a pharmacy and not a first-aid station. I leave the item on the counter, go back upstairs and over to the gym where I'm a member and where luckily they have a daycare. I go in. Now I am in tears, and immediately I have three or four women helping me give first aid to my son. One of them is even a first responder who tells me step-by-step what to do and what signs to watch for in case of concussion. My tears flow, as I cry out all of my tension, my fear for my son, and my frustration from the rudeness I was received with below.

After a few minutes the swelling recedes, my tears have dried up (Kian stopped crying about thirty seconds after the incident). Kian seems to be out of danger, so we go back downstairs to finish our shopping. I run into the pharmacist. He asks if my son is okay. I say he is, but then I yell at him, “couldn’t you have helped me, just as a human being?” He replies that he didn’t have the supplies necessary, that he only works in the pharmacy and does not know where I would go to get help. I lay into him and tell him that he still could have answered me with kindness instead of brushing me off. He could have been a little more human. Now he is on the defensive and leaves before I can unleash any more of my residue anger and frustration.

What if all the suing, the demand for compensation, the need for retribution, was really just a need for compassion? What if at the root of all of this is the need to be seen and heard?
And, if in the US we have replaced true compassion with the American dollar, what does that say about us as a society? We wonder about this new generation growing up, feeling they are owed something. Gee, I wonder where they got that? I am shocked by their attitudes, yet when I look within, there lies the seed. So maybe what I owe myself and my children, is to engage. In life, with others. To have the courage to see them and feel them. Because it is a scary thing. We don’t know what to do with all that emotion. We don’t know how deep runs the well, once it’s been tapped.

I finish my shopping, then go back a third time to the pharmacy. The man I spoke to is not there, but I explain to the other pharmacist, the owner this time, the situation. I realize that when the other pharmacist had approached the second time, he was trying to show compassion, and I cut him off with my rage.
Now it was my turn to apologize.