corona diaries

I know I haven't done many corona diaries, but I had a pretty unsettling experience at the grocery store the other day (not least because I wasn't happy with my handling of it) and it's been haunting me enough that I think I really ought to post about it.

I got into the line for entering the store, and there was a guy with a little boy ahead of me, and a woman came up to stand behind me in line who apparently knew him, and greeted him with griping about T-ball being cancelled. She was crowding me as she was talking with him, but at that point there was space for me to slide to the side a bit. As the line moved up, however, and she was no longer talking with him, she continued to always stay just over the line marked on the sidewalk; and those lines don't feel like 6 feet to me to begin with. Eventually I was feeling crowded, so I turned and gave her a shooing motion with my hand.

She glared at me and snapped, "Don't come near me!"

I was surprised by the vehemence of the response, so I said (in what I thought was a quite reasonable voice), "That's what I'm trying to say, you're getting a little close."

"Don't touch me!"

So then I'm starting to get a little wound up, because I'm too empathic and when people give me a lot of anger I start to get escalated, but then I realized that she had this high-necked jacket on and no mask was visible (hidden? or she didn't have one?) so I thought she might be concerned because she had forgotten her mask, so foolishly I asked her, "Do you have a mask?"

"Whatareyou, BLIND?" (without the customary pauses between words.)

"Because I have a clean bandana here you could use-"

"You can stop talking to me now!" (Not loudly spoken, but intensely.)

So I turned back around - not without a huff, I'll admit - and did not look at her again. But I kept wondering what I could do to repair this interaction, as I was wandering around the store. Buy a flower for her? No, something about her tone indicated if I gave her chocolates she'd throw them at me. Finally it occured to me that she had possibly been intentionally baiting me. Possibly even the constant crowding was intended to get a rise out of me? Maybe she even had a gun and wanted an excuse to shoot someone, I don't know.

And it's continued to bother me. I've been lying awake each night wondering what I should have done differently, and escalating my blood pressure when I need to get to sleep. I did go to a store manager and ask if it weren't policy that people should be wearing masks, but he informed me that 'Due to some pre-existing conditions, some people can't wear masks. It's a slippery slope, I know.' Well, and if he confronted her, he could get shot, as current news shows, so I don't blame anyone who doesn't want to get into that.

I don't know. I just don't know. I really just don't know. Even I really just don't know.