Glimmers in the Darkness

I was at Tesco Express, which is the small market in our sister building one stop up the tram line.  In Ireland, there's a small fee added when you buy a bottled drink - usually 25 or 50 cents - but you can get this refunded if you take the bottles to be recycled at any store that has a recycling kiosk.

I had a big bag full of empties....and the machine said it wasn't accepting bottles at the moment.  Grrrr....

So I went about my shopping and noticed that someone was using the machine.  I waited my turn and when I got up there, the machine again said it was out of order.  The kiosk is right next to the customer service desk/checkout.  The clerk was ringing up a customer but said he'd reset the machine for me, which he did.

I was wearing my "Meow Wars" T-shirt, and he commented that he liked my shirt.  I thanked him and said it amuses me to wear it.  He then said, "What part of the States are you from?"

Gee, how did he know I wasn't from Ireland?  😀

I said I was from Minnesota.  He got a smile on his face and said, "My all-time celebrity hero is from Minnesota."  I asked who it was, and he said Prince.  I said, "Prince was the best, and he was gone too soon."

He said, "My mum got the 'Purple Rain' album.  Her mum let her stay home from school so she could go get it.  When you go to her house, it's the first thing you see because she's got it up on the wall."

In my head, I was like "Crap, if this guy's mom was young enough to be in school when the album came out, how young is this kid??"

Express has self checkout machines, so I rolled my cart over there and got my stuff scanned.  When you recycle bottles, you get a receipt printed that you can scan at checkout to get the discount and for whatever reason, the machine never thinks you put the receipt into its slot so you have to hit the button for assistance.

The same young man came over to assist, and I said I hated that the machines never recognized when you gave it the coupon.  We commiserated about AI making more work for people because he said they have to run over to the checkouts all day to clear them when people use a coupon.

He asked how long I'd been in Ireland, and I told him  since August.  He asked if I liked it here, and I said I was grateful to be here because the US is a wreck at the moment.  He said he'd been in Texas once and was amazed that people just walked around carrying weapons.  He was asking a guy about his gun, and the guy was just like "Here" and handed it to him.  That completely flabbergasted this young man.  I said I'd lived in Texas for about eight years so I knew the mentality that inhabits much of the population there.  I said, "I can't understand taking an AR-15 to the grocery store.  It's like, what are you afraid of at the grocery store?"

He mentioned the gun culture, and I said it was one of the problems screwing up the country.  I said it was nice to be in Ireland where people seemed sane because there are a lot of stupid, crazy people in the US at the moment.

Things have been very dark lately.  Being in Ireland has insulated me a little from the horrors going on in the US but I've still been affected by it.  It was so nice to have this small glimmer of comfort in the midst of it all.