Yesterday Michael and I were in line at the our two-aisle grocery store, jostled between the juice, the croissants and the complete aisle devoted to an obscene variety of chocolate wafers, and I stepped back to allow a Bulgarian (not that this person uttered the Bulgarian phrase for “excuse me”, because most people don’t do that here) to pass. At this moment, a kind-looking 50-something woman, coming from the other direction, stepped quietly into line ahead of me. She had, to use a third grade term, cut. Not only in front of me, but in front of the five people behind me as well. The line was very obvious. She clearly thought nothing of it. There was no guilt tucked between the wrinkles around her slightly-pursed lips. She’s wasn’t even trying to play dumb. I met can-you-believe-it-eyes with Michael above her head and I snickered (perhaps secretly hoping she would look back at me, be forced to view the line and pretend to realize her mistake) but mostly because I knew there was nothing else to do.
If you’re waiting politely for your turn at the Mtel store so you can refill your phone card, and you step out of the vaguely-formed line of professionals to open two sets of impossibly narrow doors for the young mother with her baby stroller, you have just lost your place. Seriously, this happened to me.
If you are at the post office, waiting to pay your electricity bill, surrounded by mostly elderly, not-so-nice smelling fake-fur coats who appear to have never been through this, (hello? monthly) experience, there is not even an illusion of a line. There is simply a crowd of pushers. Others ear-hairs too visible for comfort, your fingers glued to the zip-latch on your purse and you’re beginning to wonder if these scarf-tied osteoporosis victims are all in this together. A kind of geriatric conspiracy! And I know, they’re old people. Regardless of what they do, they deserve your sympathy.
But what you might be starting to realize is that if I played by those rules, I would still be standing on the corner where I was last Tuesday, waiting to get on the tram. And I’m used to it. It happens all the time. Michael and I do have a better chance if we’re together—one to stand in the crowd/line, focused on the vendor’s eyes and the other to watch for cutters.
Sometimes I feel that it’s simply lack of crowd control and missing organizational methods–like we need a shipment of those innocently-swinging but significantly vigilant velvet ropes with their brass stands.
But there are other times, when there is no crowd, just a complete lack of respect for others, that I feel it is an intrinsic Bulgarian or perhaps Balkan quality. Like when I’m crossing a street (my right of way-there’s a stop sign) and the car coming has no intention of stopping for me. Sometimes it speeds up!; or when my colleagues (whom I swear, seem to like me) never introduce me to anyone that comes into the office, or make an effort to speak English when I’m in the room; or when I’m in public and approaching a door, hands full of bags and no one’s hand lingers a second longer for the “hold.”
And you would think its common decency, right? But it’s not that simple. I’ve come to believe (or I want to believe) that these are good people. They just don’t get it—-that intangible, but essential quality, which spurs one to accommodate and help their fellow citizen, to play fair and to wait their turn.
My theories about the aftermath of communism, now a convenient, but not yet sufficiently researched excuse, suggests that for the adult population at least, this behavior may be the result of responding to the “cut off” after years of rationed handouts. During communism, they knew they would receive at least one bowl of porridge, right?. Perhaps now, with this pesky market economy, they’re afraid of receiving no porridge at all. Perhaps. I’m oversimplifying, but you get the idea.
The young, I suppose, are only learning by example.
The real trouble is that when you’re living amongst this, the most instinctive method for progressive existence is participation. It’s like living in New York City. Softies don’t survive and kindness-killing is not a solution, but a sometimes comical and often disappointing strategy. Here, if I want my banitza, stamp, newspaper or Mtel card, I must fight for it. It’s called defensive shopping, I suppose. I must anticipate the next shopper’s move, right? I must push and cut along with everyone else.
But I don’t want to become a salty Eastern European. So I’m trying. Really. Beating them is bitter victory and joining them is like giving up. So I have to be nice to them. Cliché as it sounds, I have to be the change I want to see in the world. Or in this case, the change I want to see in the Peace Corps country.
