Bacon Scrapins – “Faces in the Food Court”
by Barry S. Wolfe
Bacon Scrapins are the little bits of meat left in the greasy fry pan. They’re tasty, but the ‘nutrition’ needs searching for. This tale is a bacon scrapin.
It started out as a discussion about grave stones. My wife and I were sitting in the mall food court, fully vaccinated, properly socially distancing, with our masks just below our chins as we slurped our soft drinks through environmentally friendly straws.
I’m at that age. The age when you notice that the time ahead is a lot shorter than the time past, and you consider, ‘What have I added along the way that might be worth remembering?’ – by others reading a grave memorial marker, for example. It was too big a question so I changed the subject.
“Look at the variety of faces walking by.” I pointed out to my wife with a nod of my head. “Let’s try to count how many different places these faces may have originally come from?”
“There are lots of faces, but many people may have come here recently, or a few generations ago. Some may have first come here 17,000 years ago. Who cares where they came from, and when, let’s just see how many varieties we can see. They’re all here now.” My wife has a way of uncomplicating things for me sometimes.
So, we counted. We tried to agree on features that distinguish; things like shape of head, nose, eyes, eye brows, skin tone, chins, height, body structure, type of walking gait, clothing style, hats. We tried to overhear languages, and accents. There were lots! We were surprised by how many different people there were just passing through our vision and hearing in one food court.
“This is amazing!” I said. “There are a couple of dozen different back grounds of folks here. What a country we live in!”
“And they’re all smiling, or frowning, or scolding their young kids, or wiping ice cream off small jackets, or struggling with packages. They’re all different, and every one of them – every one of us – is the same.” she added.
“Yah. They’re all here, just like my great-grandfather came from Germany in the early 1800’s and begat me. I wonder if they had a smooth transition to their new city or had a tough struggle to fit in and be accepted? I wonder how they feel about being here even now? I wonder how the Ukrainians will be accepted if we get some of those refugees here?” I pondered.
“Everybody’s just trying to live their lives and be happy. Let’s see if you and I can do our best to make things as smooth as possible and be kind.” She concluded.
“That was easy”, I thought. “Be kind now! A grave stone marker is redundant.”