The #2 bus goes north and south on High Street, which is a main drag in Columbus, Ohio. When generic foods and membership shopping clubs were new concepts, a low-cost chain called Cub Foods opened at the Graceland Shopping Center on North High. On its opening day, Cub offered newspaper coupons to attract shoppers.
The southbound #2 which left from Graceland was a bus I rode three or four times a week, and so I happened to be in a front-facing seat across the aisle from the rear exit doors when a happy woman, carrying two Cub Foods bags, got on greeted the driver. She looked around, spotted me, and I thought, "Well, I am about to have a conversation."
Normally, I like happy people, on or off the bus. And I do like to talk about bargains, which the woman's plastic shopping bags were filled with. She showed me each item, giving me the coupon or sales value on each: "The eggs were free with a coupon! And the orange juice was buy one, get one free. And this bread was forty-nine cents, regular a dollar forty-nine."
"With a coupon?" I asked, half-interested even though I wasn't sure I wanted to be encouraging this discussion.
"No, just regular!" she said, and smiled. "And I got my good Folger's coffee I like," she said, tapping the can with her forefinger like Mrs. Olson. "Same price as store brand, so I figured I would get the --"
I thought "richest kind," but the woman across the bus aisle really said "kind I like."
"Sounds like you did great," I said, starting to admire her for her shopping acumen.
"I figured it up," she said, ticking off the items by pressing the pads of each finger against the pad of her thumb. "With the eggs free and the bread fifty cents -- less than fifty cents--even with juice and coffee, my whole breakfast today will be a quarter!" She leaned back and settled her bags around herself. "And a quarter tomorrow too." She truly radiated joy.
And I thought "Why do I feel so uncomfortable? She's sane, she's clean, she's cheerful." And slowly I let myself realize that it's because this woman was me, or rather the person I would become. At the time I was forty-ish, and still hoping to age into an eternally-cool artistic type like May Sarton or Laurie Anderson. And here was this woman, close to sixty, with her bright-colored camp shirt and comfortable slacks, which didn't clash exactly but didn't quite go together either. And she was on the bus with a discount card, and her whole morning was good over a free eggs coupon. No, no, no -- not what I wanted for myself at all.
And now, twenty years later, I am indeed that woman. I have a discount bus card, my tee shirt is blue-gray and my pants are blue but the wrong kind of blue to go with the shirt, and I just relished my lunch of clearance-shelf gefilte fish, thinking "75% off!" as I forked two pieces out of the jar. And you know, I'm better with that than I thought I'd be, that day on the ol' #2 South.
