Between Pakistan and Medication

I've had to work the past two nights at my retail job. When people ask what I do, I tell them I hoist packs onto the backs of rich white people, but I learned last night that's not always the case.

The store is struggling, as are most, from the lack of business, but in the backpack department (where I've been working) we've been swamped. I'm not sure why. From my conversations with customers it appears that they way some people are dealing with the dramatic economic downturn is by leaving the country for places far and wide. I've helped people by a backpack who are traveling to the Sierra Nevadas, Thailand, Spain, Morocco, India, New Zealand, and for one couple, a backpacking trip to the mountains of Pakistan.

Pakistan? Like the mountains where Osama is said to be camping? Yikes.

On Sunday, a couple purchased $400 backpacks after both losing their jobs, receiving their severance bonuses, and deciding to travel in Mongolia and China until the end of summer. According to my supervisor, the pack department is carrying the store at this point, so I wasn't surprised at all when we were busy last night -- usually a quiet night in packs.

In four hours of work, I sold 4 backpacks, 2 travel packs (luggage-like packs) and a few suitcases. One man, a good 6 1/2 feet tall and equally wide looked like Santa Claus in denim. Every pocket in his pants, shirt, coat and current tattered backpack was stuffed and overflowing. It looked as if he were afflicted with unnatural bumps all over his body, but in fact they were wads of paper, rags, and plastic bags. We struck up a conversation about assumptions -- I'm not sure how we got there or why -- and he said, "You'll see a man picking up a quarter from the ground and you may assume he's unemployed, but he could just as easily be a brain surgeon. It's so hard to tell these days."

Amiable and gracious, he had questions about backpacks. He wanted a bigger backpack and settled on one twice the size of the one he was currently carrying. Though I tried not to assume, he gave the first impression of a homeless man carrying his every possession on his person. His hands were dirty, his fingernails long, and his gray tangled beard looked stained around his lips from too much coffee. He was grateful for my help and said as he left, "Thank you for all your assistance. You have been most kind." He bowed then bending his full head of long gray hair down to his waist. Doctor or vagrant? Hard to tell.

One young couple I helped pushed around a store shopping cart filled to the brim with all sorts of camping accessories, clothes, and shoes. Their last stop was in the pack department where they wanted to purchase two waterproof packs of substantial size.

I won't get into the options of such a request. Suffice it to say, waterproof and large equals expensive. Even the options in the clearance bin were $450 (yes, on clearance) so when they decided on two $500 packs, I roughly estimated their shopping cart to be rolling around $2000 worth of merchandise.

An hour after helping them, I went on break and as I was leaving the department I saw the man still wandering around the store pushing his pricey cart. His girlfriend was looking at a few last minute accessories and he was, rather frantically, walking up and down aisles perusing all the camping knick knacks.

While I didn't know this young man, I knew him. He was the student I always had in class who fidgeted -- tapping his pencil, bouncing his leg up and down, squirming in his seat, popping up constantly to sharpen a pencil or throw something into the garbage. Though he was now in his mid-20s, as a middle school student he would be the student who needed to visit the school secretary for his lunchtime medications and if he forgot, he'd be the annoying, out of control student teachers dreaded in their afternoon classes.

This was ADHD in adult form and as I watched him squirm up and down the aisles, pushing his cart with exuberance, never settling to look at any one product, I had to laugh when he slapped his forehead and shouted out (and yes, I mean shouted), "Oh no! I forgot to call the unemployment office!"

There is so much in that one exclamation. I can't even begin to dissect it. It carried the weight of today's economic concerns, the American need to consume, the lack of recent medications, the impulsive nature of a 20-something, and the apparent disconnect between the statement and the reality of his current situation. $2000 of merchandise and the need to call the unemployment office.

I work again tonight. I'm hoping it's slow though the way things have been going, I will most likely be hoisting packs onto more backs -- some rich, some unemployed, and some stradled between Pakistan and medication.