I was standing in the checkout aisle at Giant Food, in a sort of trance. It took me a moment to realize I had become part of a drama.
The shopper in front of me had left her purse at the register while she went to the front of the store for a bouquet of flowers, which she had decided to add to her purchase. The fact that she had left her purse behind alarmed the cashier, who called after her. She hurried back.
"He could have just grabbed your purse! He'd be out of here before you even knew it."
The shopper looked over at me and said, "Oh, I trust him." She finished paying for her groceries and the bouquet, smiled nonchalantly at me and then at the cashier, and left.
I paid for my purchase – a box of Melitta #2 coffee filters and a bag of flour. The cashier had not gotten over her astonishment; she began telling the story to the neighboring cashier, who had just returned and reopened her register.
"And you know what she said to me? She said she trusted him. He could have had her purse and run out the door and there would have been nothing she could do about it."
"Well, you're here," I commented. The cashier's concern struck me as admirable, but slightly over-the-top. Was there really a high risk of the purse being snatched? But then again, I was seeing the incident through my own eyes, with privileged information concerning one of the participants – myself. That is, I "knew" what the cashier didn't: that I'm not a purse-snatcher.
"It's not my responsibility," she said. "You think I'm going to put myself at risk? You could just turn around and shoot me! It's her purse. She leaves it here and you steal it, that's her problem." She then reminded me that my Giant bonus card would get me fifty cents off the coffee filters.
"Trusts him," she said, returning to the topic. "Only in Columbia."
I wondered about the dynamics – sexual, racial, social. I'm a white male in my mid-thirties; I often look a little unkempt. (I was, however, wearing a natty coat, which I expected would counter my aura of dishevelment.) I also work on an unusual schedule, which means I am sometimes at Giant doing errands during the afternoon. The cashier was African-American, probably in her twenties; the shopper was middle-aged and Asian; in line behind me, observing the scene with curiosity, were a mother and daughter of possibly Middle Eastern origin. Columbia, Maryland is a famously diverse planned community built in the late sixties; it is also the site of ongoing, if partly concealed, tensions over schools, property values, and allegedly rising crime – the usual stuff, except that this particular town wasn't supposed to be "usual." It was intended to be a sort of utopia.
I'm one half of a mixed marriage; we moved here two years ago. We wanted to live somewhere that was at once liberal, ethnically and socially diverse, non-racist, comfortable and safe.
I don't know which, if any, of the above factors were at work. They provide context and gist for speculation, but it's hard to be conclusive. The cashier was expressing an anxiety, but I would have to be her to understand its source. But even if I were in her shoes, maybe I wouldn't understand. After all, I left the store feeling anxious too, though I'm not sure exactly why.
12:45:47 PM 
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