Blemished and game

This morning I read a delightful blog post about "Being Game." The author (who I have blipped  before, with my buddy Devorah, who is her mom) writes, "I was never game. Not as a kid, not as an adult. Kids would start to race and I would yell, 'I'm not racing!'"

I'm the same way. I had rheumatic fever when I was six and seven. That and my mother's illnesses eclipsed my childhood. Didn't ride a bike, swim, jump rope, do cartwheels, or run. I took care of my siblings because my mother couldn't do it; I became responsible, read, worked hard. I was an introvert anyway, and being forcibly confined to solitude in childhood left me socially awkward, but not visibly disabled. Blemished. I learned to walk again and returned to school and joined my age-group, ahead of them academically. I looked pretty much like everyone else except for being tall and skinny. I was a perpetual klutz on the margins of the playground, had to take a note from my doctor every year explaining that I wasn't allowed to do PE or sports. Once the medical establishment decided I could begin some physical activity, because the heart murmur was less alarming, I was seventeen already. I discovered some physical activities I could love: dancing, sex, long solitary walks.

I never thought of myself as game, but I've been re-thinking. About the ways each of us is game. How we launch ourselves bravely over the edges of what scares us. Yesterday I was game to go to the local emergency food program because this month, with many medical bills to pay from the last few months, I'm short of funds. So there I was, sitting on an old wooden church pew four hours in a cold, damp church basement, shivering in good company, and I thought that probably few of my Blip friends have had this experience. I'm game to Blip this, I thought.

You sit with other people who are economic castaways: jobless or pensionless, houseless, old, or sick. You wait. People don't talk much, though a woman with some kind of mental illness is raving, voicing all the uncomfortable thoughts the rest of us keep to ourselves. There's no TV, no radio, just the shuffling of restless feet. Some people pace to keep warm. Two people have "We are the 99%" buttons on their jackets. Nobody has an iPhone, an iPad, a laptop. Nobody talks on a cell phone. The children don't have video games. Now and then the kids get restless and one of their parents slaps them. There's a plate of slightly-stale donuts, each wrapped in plastic, and there's a church lady who sits near them and tells people they can only have one. We gaze at the ceiling, smile timidly at each other. There is unspoken empathy. We're in this together. All of us waiting for free food. After an hour or so of waiting, a man comes with a basket full of tickets that have numbers on them.  This causes a great stir of excitement. There's a number for everybody, but you draw for your place in line. There are about forty-five people waiting, and I draw number 29. Then they start calling numbers: 1, 2, 3. One by one, people emerge with their boxes and bags. You look to see what they got. You see things that make you a little excited. A firm eggplant. A jar of honey. A tube of good toothpaste. But then you wonder if all the good stuff will be gone by the time you get your turn. I wait two more  hours.  

It takes being game to queue for free food in the USA. Finally they get to 29, and I am escorted through the food storage room by a friendly volunteer who tells me how much I can have of each thing. One can of tuna: I can pick from a variety of brands, some in water, some in oil, more or less salt. One small sack of potatoes. Unlimited parsnips. I love parsnips. One slightly blemished yellow bell pepper, a big sack of oatmeal. One sack of salad greens, only a day past its expiration date. A half-dozen eggs. A whole sack of hazel nuts. I am welcome to unlimited loaves of day-old bread. And so I fill my three grocery bags and leave those with numbers in the 30s and 40s still waiting. I can go three times in six months. I could be angry about income inequality and the distribution system. But right now, I have this lovely bell pepper.

I took a couple of pictures while I was there, but I felt it wouldn't be right to post them. Instead I took a picture yesterday afternoon of my luscious blemished bell pepper. This morning, eating a bowl of free oatmeal with a blemished apple, I grinned, grateful for my riches, for my laptop and camera, for my library card, for my mind and heart that still work, for my old car that still runs, for my friendships, for the volunteers who make free food available to those of us who need it, and for the truth Shana expresses: "I didn't know that by being game, I would find so much joy." It's true, Shana. In being game as I am, I also find joy.  It's a continual surprise, all this joy.