Everyone is nice!

Every Saturday morning I sit at the kitchen table in my bathrobe drinking coffee and reading the newspaper, watching the clock with one eye as the hands pass nine. I pretend not to have noticed how late it is when my husband asks, “Are you going to the grocery store?”

I dread the Ica Maxi on Saturday mornings. If, by some winning lottery ticket of a chance I manage to get in and out in an hour, I’m cheerful beyond recognition. The more likely scenario, however, is the one in which I want the whole world to know just how miserable shopping at the Ica Maxi makes me. I shout through the glass of my car window at the woman making a twelve-point turn to back into her parking spot, I grump at the man who thinks he was first at the meat counter, I growl as I am pushed sideways by a cart manoeuvred by two stray children joy-riding through the aisles.

Sometimes I think this bad-temperedness results from the extreme sport of culture clash when I meet too many Norwegians in one small and crowded place. Sometimes I’m sure it begins when I’m expected to pay How much?! for shrink-wrapped green beans with growing brown spots on them that were packaged in Thailand?! three weeks ago. And sometimes I’m just sour because I long to be back at home in my bathrobe, enjoying my second cup of coffee.

Last Saturday, however, I entered the grocery store a bit more cheerful than usual, having just received my paycheck. I gave those exotic vegetables a second glance. I even decided to have a look at the top-shelf olive oils – the ones nice enough to be in glass bottles with fancy little tags hanging from gold elastic cord. Italian. Extra virgin. I stuck my nose up to the Ica brand sitting down there on the bottom row, looking so cheap in its extra thick plastic, and I carefully placed a beautiful bottle of “Monini” – Delicato! – into my cart and headed for the check-out lane.

And then?

(Here I let out a long and forlorn sigh.)

I remember the elongated second in which that slender bottle of oil slipped from my hand somewhere between the cart and the conveyor belt. I recall the mix of fear and hope when I thought it might – could it not, please? – just bounce and roll when it hit the floor. And I can still feel my heart cringe upon hearing the sound of smashing glass.

I looked down, only to look up again at the older man in front of me paying for his groceries. His black shoes glistened as though they’d been professionally shined, his black trousers now an even darker shade from the cuffs to the knee.

On the verge of tears I sprayed him anew with whatever Norwegian words flew out of my mouth, hoping that they connoted my sorrow, regret, despair, disbelief, sorrow, regret, sorry-ness . . .

The woman at the cash register handed the man a paper towel (as one does in the face of disaster? As one might throw a stick to someone drowning because it was the only thing around?)

In what I thought must have been some psychological disorder of affect, the man smiled gently at me and said, “Det er bare ting som skjer.”

Some things just happen?

Oh no, no they don’t. That jar of pizza sauce I dropped in this very line, that jar of baby food that flew out of my hands and across the floor . . . and oh, that terrible time when I stepped on an unseen package of ketchup at a café and a missile of red shot out, painting the entire backside of an elderly man seated near me. I recoil at the memory of it. Worst of all, I lacked the courage to tell him what had just happened. I fled.

I watched as the man futilely wiped the paper towel down the length of his trousers. I looked down at my own suede boots. Nothing, not even a ricocheted drop of oil had landed on me.

The woman at the cash register implored me to get another bottle as quickly as possible, nodding towards the snaking line of carts growing behind me.

On my way back to the olive oil aisle it struck me that I had actually ruined this man’s clothes. And shoes! I pictured his frail, hunched-over wife as he returned to their tiny apartment. “Oi sann! Arne, what has happened to you?” she would say, and shake her head over how on earth she would get those stains out. Or worse! He lived alone and would stand at his kitchen sink for hours, scrubbing his shoes with a watery sponge, wishing his wife were still alive, as she would know what to do.

I picked up my pace to a run – I would give him my phone number and buy him new trousers and shoes. I had to.

But when I returned he had gone. I was devastated. This man, this dear man had not so much as raised his voice at me. Why had I not thought to give him my phone number before I ran off?

“He was nice,” I told the cashier meekly.

“He was very nice,” she said in a matter-of-fact voice that in no way matched my gratitude.

“Everyone is nice!” the man behind me joined in.

I laughed, “No, certainly not!”

“Jo,” he said, using the Norwegian emphatic “yes.” “Alle er snill.”

I shook my head in disbelief. Is it true? Is everyone nice?

When I covered a man in pizza sauce he responded, “Sånn er det av og til” – that’s how it is sometimes. When the jar of baby sauce flew out of my hands the cashier had smiled and said, “Det går så fint” – literally, “It goes so nice,” but probably more like “It’s really fine.” And when I doused a man in ketchup? . . .

A young man wearing a red Ica shirt arrived at the scene carrying an industrial-sized roll of paper towels. He crouched on the floor beside me and began frantically tearing off sheets to throw over the glass and oil. I warned him to be careful and rolled the wheels of my cart on through, making two perfect lines of oil that would mark the path all the way back to my car. And then follow me home.