Giveth & Taketh

December 16th, 2024

Wanna know how bad grocery prices are?

I just spent $115 at Target this afternoon and have literally nothing to show for it.

Sigh. Allow me to explain. This is a story about giving, taking, and how we decide what it means. I want you to know that as you read this story and see all the red flags, I saw them, too. It doesn't change the outcome.

After class today I decided to do some light shopping in Burnsville. I said hi to my friend Randy in the produce section, and as I walked away I was approached by a woman.

She asked me if I could help.

I told her I didn't have any cash. She said she just needed some baby food. I thought, "Well, I can do that." So she and I starting walking over to the infant aisle and talked along the way. She's from Ukraine; her family had recently emigrated here because of the war. She talked shit about Putin. She was nice and asked a little about me (she learned I had a 17-year-old son and said that was impossible because I look 20, what a charmer!) and then we arrived at the aisle.

She immediately started stocking my cart with formula. As I'm watching the canisters pile up, I ask her how much they cost. She points at a sign that says $38.99 and I say whoa, I can't afford all that, I can maybe buy three. So she puts the rest back, before heading down another aisle and grabbing more things like baby drops.

At this point, I set a boundary. I tell her I can maybe spare $100. She assures me that I can make any decisions I need to at check out, which we head straight to after she puts the last items in my cart.

At the register, I start scanning and realize she lied to me. The formula is $59.99 each. At this point, I've scanned five items and my bill is over $200. I tell her I simply can't afford that, and ask a Target employee to void two items. The woman stares at me blankly.

I realize here that only one of two things are true: either she is a really good mama, willing to do any- and everything for her family at home, or she is an absolute sociopath, who does not see me as a human being who works really hard for his money but a very stupid ATM.

So I put $115 on my debit card (after my $5 Circle rewards) and she takes the stuff, the bag, and the receipt and heads back into the store.

I feel really weird about all of this. So I go to customer service, where I end up talking to three different Target team members who basically tell me the same thing: panhandling is extremely common here this time of year, they're aware of the woman in the store, there isn't really anything they can do but politely ask them to leave, and there was a very good chance she was going to return that stuff for money.

I told the team members all I wanted to do was help and I sincerely hope I did, and then one of them said to me: "I don't know if this will make you feel better, but no matter what she does with what you gave her, you did help her."

I may be stupid (you just read that story along with me, right?), but that genuinely did make me feel better.

I talk about gifts all the time; two of my favorite books are The Gift and Braiding Sweetgrass, and I could talk about gift-giving literally all day. As a culture, we do it so wrong, and it's hard to undo how we think about it.

But we can't decide what someone does with our gifts. All we can do is choose to give them. I tell people this all the time, as a fellow former liar: what you do when someone lies to you says nothing about you, and everything about the liar.

As a writer, I wondered why I was sharing this story. What's the point? Where's the angle? And then I realized that, like most of life, there isn't one.

Cynical people will take this as a warning, something to heed as they head out to the store today. Optimistic people might think it's nice that there are still folks willing to help, despite hearing and seeing every single bell, whistle, and flag possible.

But this is really a reminder about gifts and why we give them. All I truly hope is that the thing I gave keeps moving; I hope that one day she is in a place where a gift is needed and she can give it, and an act like today's echoes in her mind and moves her heart and hands in the right direction.

Well, that, and this is a story about how infant formula should really be cheaper, sheesh.