16:48 - 18.11.07
Scarecrow
My contract with my wireless provider ended at the end of October. I negotiated a new one about a week before then, because the costs were much too high; brought the monthly rate down by half in a package. Picked up the new router the weekend after Hallowe'en - and have had nothing but problems since. Bleagh. The past few days the darn thing has been dropping data and freezing up even in the middle of the night when it usually isn't so much of an issue. I was beginning to think maybe they had mistaken my requests and put me back on dial up. It shouldn't take five minutes to load up any webpage these days. Yesterday it cratered totally so no entry. So sorry dear diary.
Friday I did another piecework assignment. Headed off for a far south mall mid-afternoon. As I rounded my corner toward the bus stop I found a police car parked. Wondered at first if it was doing a speed trap, but then realized there was a civilian female in the front seat talking with the officer. She was crying. A guess being that she was in her thirties or forties. She was a bit dishevelled, so maybe a domestic violence case. Not happy. Headed for my stop and noticed a yellow school bus pulling up directly across the street. Four boys got off. Three of the boys were obviously brothers, both by behaviour and by ethnicity. The fourth boy was on his own. The three were really bullying the single boy, taunting him. That one boy was doing everything in his power to avoid a confrontation. The youngest of the three started to chase the one boy, who darted across the middle of the street toward me. Then the oldest of the brothers noticed me watching and called the younger one back. The one who was chased looked both angry and afraid, or angry at being afraid. Or angry at having to risk being hit by a car to avoid a confrontation. The three brothers walked to the crosswalk and then sauntered slowly across the main drag, while traffic in both directions piled up waiting for them to cross as the early part of rush hour began.
Third vignette before my bus arrived was as the three boys crossed the street. A woman probably in her thirties, very smartly dressed in office clothes, walking down the opposite side of the street. She was wearing leather boots with those very thin spiky high heels. Walking with a great deal of difficulty since the weight of the extra material she was carrying was actually making the heels sink into the ground where she tread. You see, she was carrying a basket of, what appeared to be, freshly laundered clothes probably retrieved at the laundromat in the strip mall a couple of blocks away, on her way home from work. She also had several other parcels perched on top of that basket and dangling from her arms. It was obvious she was struggling. She turned in at one of the houses directly across from the bus stop. That house has a long history of odd or unhappy stories. One of the couples that owned it were killed in a head on car crash on their way home from a square dance tournament they were competing in. I had worked with one of their daughters. It was a very sad story, of course.
The ride to the station was uneventful. On the train I contemplated the river. The water is so low now that large gravel/sand bars are appearing in the middle of the river and around the buttresses of the bridges. Riprap on the banks exposed to the roots of the construction, almost made it seem as though the river was gasping for water, like we would gasp for breath. Pink-stained clouds in the east announced the approach of sundown. My son had pulled his heavy winter coat out of the closet that morning and had advised me to make certain I wore my winter coat too. The ambient air temperature wasn't that bad, but the wind was really bitter. I also had dressed quite differently from my usual get-up. The satiny, jeweltone blue Tibetan over-dress I had bought several years ago over top of dress pants. Can't recall the last time I wore dress pants - fully lined black wool at that. They are of a size I haven't been able to fit into for a few years. I was just happy to be able to wear them comfortably again. My hair was pulled back in a ponytail with a red velvet scrunchie to hold things in place. Black sling back shoes. A lot of people who know me well would likely not even have recognized me because I looked so different than my usual self, yet still I looked no different than a lot of other women in the city. Hmmm. Conundrum. Most of the fellow travellers fell into two categories. Shift workers on the first leg of their journeys to work for the evening. Older teens heading toward their Friday night rendezvous with their friends, travelling in clumps and clusters. Hoodies, jeans and sneakers seemed to be the uniform du jour. Transferred to the southbound train finding myself surrounded by office workers heading home for the night. Most had their noses buried in their book of the moment or their eyes glazed as they zoned out to the music pouring into their ears from their iPods/MP3s. Maybe that should be called the "new opiate of the people".
Arrived at the mall for a three hour stint of observation. Requirement of the assignment was that not even a powder room break was allowed during that time. My observation point was directly across from a photo booth that was jammed with groups of female teens for most of the shift. Many wanting to be noticed by passersby while doing their posing. Or maybe it was the presence of the live theatre booth just behind, with the striking young male manning it trying to sell the new season's tickets, that stimulated their theatrical performances. One young woman had even brought her new purchases of spangly evening tops into the booth; changing and snapping photo after photo. Maybe she was hoping to use them in a model portfolio or something similar. Since I had to stay in one place for so long, I had to bring something that would seem a logical reason for me to do so. I settled for a page of written work in a notebook that could pass for the beginnings of a screenplay about Christmas shopping in the mall. Good thing I did, because the mall security arrived an hour in to the assignment wanting me to "explain yourself, Lucy". The female guard was actually quite sympathetic and even offered some ideas of her own.
Not long after,I glanced up from what I was recording to see one of my nieces approaching. She had that glazed look of someone on their coffee break just hoping to make it to their favorite food court kiosk and back in the fifteen minutes allowed. Not always easy if the mall is crowded with shoppers. I called her name as she passed by. For a moment it seemed as though she hadn't heard me. As I mentioned earlier, I wasn't allowed to move from the spot I had settled into for the duration of the assignment. She must have done a double take, because she returned a minute later to greet me. I hadn't expected to see anyone I knew there, but nor had she. She said she had just started working that week at one of the nice boutiques that sells clothes to young adult women. Perfect match for her, she has a wonderful sense of fashion. This mall had a different clientele from the last two malls I visited. A lot of young, but obviously affluent families. Something new was the shoes their children were wearing - had wheels in their heels. Dangerous for anyone nearby. Second grouping was a lot of mid-teen adolescents. Almost all shoppers and staff were of Caucasian or Chinese heritage. The one mall visited a couple of days ago was almost entirely caucasian, while the university mall was very cosmopolitan in human composition. Odd how different locations seem to draw entirely different populations despite having similar stores. One could almost create a television series based on that type of idea. You know, an itinerant regional manager visiting their company's stores based in different malls finding that the same issue demanded different solutions because of the diversity of customers and employees intermixing. Call it Shopping: New Foreign/Domestic Diplomacy.
The male teens were all in groups checking out the females of their age. They tended to cluster around the sports and technology stores, so sort of manufactured their own defeat where getting a hot date was concerned. They did stand a safe distance from the photo booth watching with something approaching both awe and panic. It was actually quite entertaining to watch as the girls tried to lure the boys closer - just to get their photo of course. A multi-generational family of tourists - probably US citizens - eschewed the photo booth, but snapped a whole series of pictures of the younger generation posing in front of different stores, their signs prominently displayed behind the subjects of the photos. They were obviously just enjoying being together as a unit someplace they considered fun. Toward the end of my shift a lot of shoppers walking by carrying styrofoam containers acquired at the food court. Dinner or a late evening snack, I guess.
The first return train ride back to downtown was quite discomfitting. A couple of young males dressed in gang gear came by and sat waiting near me on the platform. Leather jackets, tough talk and regular bouts of projectile spitting. Bleagh. They pulled out hip flasks. It appeared that they were filled with liquor, which they both downed at a fierce rate. A lot of obviously new goods being brought out from inside those jackets - no bags with store logos, just factory-sealed with the price tags. The young man closest to me pulled out a delicate filigree rosary and was trying to get the chain untangled, as he worked at the hasp trying to undo it. His fingers were just too big and clumsy to make it work. Nearby a young woman floated at the edge of the platform apparently stoned or very over-medicated. Four young men came up the platform and were greeted with an almost hysterical response from the young lady. She hadn't seen them for sooooooo long. The young men looked as though they were trying to be respectful of her, but also were trying to peel her away so they could continue along with their plans for the night. They obviously liked her, but didn't want to be entangled with her in the state she was in.
The train pulled up and the males beside me headed for a different car. Sighed with relief, as I sat down in a seat surrounded by older teens carrying on enthusiastic conversations on a variety of subjects. Next stop I felt like I had been transported into a scene from "Oliver Twist". A very solid, muscular male going slightly to seed around the middle in a black hockey jersey and jeans; his blond hair tucked up into a non-descript, grey baseball cap. His blue eyes were glazed, likely from the effect of the nearly empty mickey of rye he was downing as he entered. Three older teens scrambled in right after, with that worshipful attitude toward the first male that speaks of a close-knit group. The older two teens were obviously a couple; wrapped up together in one seat, the skateboard of the youth held just as closely to him as his girlfriend as though it was infinitely precious. The third youth was about fifteen and looked the spitting image of a grown-up "Artful Dodger" as he was played in the movie of Oliver Twist. He was drinking from a hip flask too. He was interesting in that he looked as though he really didn't want to be with that group, but had no choice. The first male to board first congratulated the young couple on their excellent diversionary tactics and then took what appeared to be a court summons from his jacket pocket. He handed it with a theatrical flourish to the younger male, saying that it was rightfully his to deal with and would likely cost him in the range of about $100 to $150 dollars at sentencing. The young man took it sullenly, but without comment. The first male, even though he wasn't loud, had an aura of meanness about him that made him very intimidating to be near - especially when in a train car, in a tunnel, where there was no place to go for safety. The young people around me had fallen quiet by now, so it wasn't just me that was bothered. I feigned sleep, so that I couldn't be engaged in conversation/confrontation. The youngest of the quartet got off at the next station. The bully made comments to the two remaining of his group about that stop being a place where brutal forms of retribution could be carried out. He started to go into detail, but the other two shushed him. Two young men took the seat in front of me when they boarded at that stop. They were discussing the boxing techniques that they had been working on at the gym. The prospects of the one young man were being assessed for the competition he was about to enter. The bully then became very quiet around those two fellow travellers, the earlier swagger and bluster disappearing immediately. His only act of defiance of social convention now, being to toss the empty mickey on the floor of the train near, but not too near, the feet of those boxers. The bully got off at the next stop, after rapping out some directions to the young couple. They looked relieved to be out of his presence. Another young male in dreadlocks arrived and sat by me. He started to talk with another group of teens that he knew across the aisle and behind us. He said he had quit school and gone into his own business. Hmmm. I wish him well. Arrived at the downtown core thankfully disembarking that train. Headed across the main street so as to catch my train back to my end of the city. The rest of the trip was uneventful. I sat being thankful for getting safely that far. As I've mentioned before, I usually dress for travel so as to blend in and look as though I can take care of myself. Dressing in more upscale clothing can sometimes be a greater risk than it's worth. Next time I think I'll take a change of clothes with me. Used to do that when I attended all those evening in the downtown volunteer committee meetings long ago. Now I remember why. Arrived home around 11 in the pm and crawled into bed with the cats for comfort.
I think I'll write about yesterday in my next post. Good night dear diary.
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