A veggie tale...

Sunday, is a working day for us working folk.


Housecleaning, laundry, cooking, and of course the dreaded grocery shopping.

My God, I hate to grocery shop.

Especially since I've decided that we aren't eating healthy enough around here and I know what that entails.

A closer inspection of every darn thing that goes into my cart.

A closer examination of all the crap I usually feed my loved ones.

Hauling around extra healthy bottled water and a heart filled with guilt makes the trip even worse.

It's sooooo much easier to just throw in a bag of cookies, a couple of boxes of mac and cheese and call it a day.

Anyway, I was feeling out an avacado when I heard someone say something to me.

I looked up and in front of me was a young man who I recognized, but couldn't place.

A friend of Sweet Prince Buttercup's??? Bears??? Someone Googie knew?

"How are you Beth?" he asked me.

Who who who who who the heck are you? I thought.

And where do I know you from?

"I've been doing fine" I said. "how bout you?"

When he began to talk more I suddenly remembered who he was.

A kid from my program.

But wait...something had happened.

This was the face, the voice, the smile I remembered.

But gone was the dingy raggedly cut long black hair.

Gone were the seven (or more) rings that used to hang off his ears.

The stainless steel bolts that pierced his eyebrows, with skin and hair and perpetual redness around them...GONE.

Gone was the thick black ring that he wore in his lip.

He used to twirl it when he got into trouble.

It made my stomach hurt to see it go round and round.

He was always in a lot of trouble.

Gone were the angry chains and spikes that he used to wear around his wrists and neck.

And in a funny twist, gone were the grungy black shorts that he wore all winter, instead in this muggy August heat he wore a pair of light colored jeans.

And an American Eagle tee.

And his hair...my God, you should have seen his hair.

Light brown and cut in the most current "handsome young guy" look.

"Still on probation?" I asked.

He'd been taken out of our program when it was determined that he was not going to cooperate. He was not going to behave. He was not going to stop endangering himself and others.

He was the only kid our visiting chef ever almost laid his hands on.

He caught him eating raw stewing beef off the end of one of our butcher knives and chef came unglued.

He backed him against a wall and yelled like I've never heard him yell.


Jared was good for that kind of stuff.

The shock value of any action was his motivation.

The more outlandish, the more outrageous, the more he liked doing it.

To the other youth he was a Day Treatment hero.

To the staff, he was a mighty thorn in our sides.

A 6'4" inch thorn.

"Yeah, still on probation" he said "for another six months."

Obviously "placement" had been good for him.

"I'm on non reporting" he said.

I asked him about what his court order said and what the judge had him doing.

"Working and eventually going to college" he said.

Awesome, I thought to myself.

We talked for a couple more minutes and then I swear I wanted to reach up and give him a big hug...I was soooo proud of the new and obviously improved him.

Instead I offered a closed fist.

Which he bumped with his own.

"Take care kid" I said "and stop by school when you're in the area. I know the other staff would love to see this transformation you've had."

"We love to see our kids all grown up."

"I will Beth" he said "see ya around."

I don't remember much about the rest of my mundane Sunday grocery shopping.

I do remember catching people looking at me.

Probably wondering why this crazy fool woman was skipping around the fruits and vegetables.

Whistling and giggling.

And shaking her head.

Witnessing a miracle will do that kind of stuff to ya.

EDITED TO ADD....Don't anyone go getting their bloomers in a bunch..I have nothing against long black hair, spikes, piercings, tattoos, grungy clothing, etc etc etc, honestly, I don't...I do have something against angry, self destructing teens who make the world an unsafe place for themselves and others.


I try never judge a book by its cover.

Dropping a bomb and the ball....

Two days ago in my culinary class I had the loveables making cake cookies...we do this often, they're cheap and easy to make.

Most times we use an ice cream scooper to make really large cookies...they are baked in a professional convection oven.

Stressing the importance of having the cookies be uniform in size I suggested to one of the loveables that since he didn't have enough dough left to make another cookie that he should divide what he had left and add it to any of his other cookies that might be "needy"..."add it to the deserving cookies" I teased.

He proceeded to go to each cookie and comment...

"You are stupid" he said to one.

"You are ugly" he said to another.

"You are too fat already" he said to a third.

"You are black" he said to the fourth.

I was stunned silent.

I hoped his stupid comment went past my African American co-worker.

There were four staff around that large table and not a damn one of us said one word.

But I'm positive we all heard it...there was no way we didn't.

This incident took me back to something that happened to me in high school...I was in ninth grade and had a wonderful friend named Jackie.

My high school was mixed (I won't say diverse, because we weren't)..we were mixed.

There were the blacks and there were the whites.

And once in a while we mixed.

I'm Caucasian and Jackie is African American.

Back then we called ourselves White and Black.

Jackie was a tall, leggy beautiful girl.

And she was funny as hell.

We talked every day at school and often on the phone.

One day I was telling her a funny story and in the middle of it I said the "N" word...it slipped out of my mouth and before I could catch it, it landed in the middle of Jackie's and my friendship.

Like a lead balloon.

I pretended like I didn't say it.

Jackie pretended like she didn't hear it.

But our friendship was never the same.

So I stand some 30 years later around a work table with a couple of punks and the adults placed in charge of them and I pretend that the elephant in the room is not there.

I should have told the punk to shut the hell up. I should have yanked his dumb rear end out of the room and told him how stupid and ignorant what he said was.

I should have done something, anything.

Instead, I let it melt and slip through the cracks and slide it's slimy slithery self onto the floor and out of the room.

It's destruction, though mighty, was silent.

Just like the bomb I dropped so long ago.

Shame on me, times two..... :-(