I should not be surprised when I find out that an experience we’ve had that we thought was unique turns out not to be. But I often am.
NPR carried the story of a First Mate on a container ship making a China-California-Japan circuit on a regular basis. The officer is ethnic Indian, a Sikh from Punjab. The story focused on how he spends his day off in port at Oakland, California. He heads out early with a shopping list; Best Buy for electronics, Target or Walmart for consumer supplies like Gerber’s Baby Food and various lotions, and Victoria’s Secret for… well, you get the picture (a trip there is indicative of a husband on his way home). The reporter was tickled by the idea of this man of the sea spending his time on shore shopping for his extended family.
Turns out, a local church serving seafarer’s in Oakland provides volunteers for such commercial excursions. Turns out, he is not a unique Sikh!
In 1969, while we were in graduate school in Seattle, Judy and I enjoyed lunch on board a freighter docked at the Port of Tacoma, guests of an Indian First Mate and the Captain. Why we were lunching on an Indian freighter is another story in itself. The next day, when the ship had moved to the Port of Seattle, Judy agreed to drive the First Mate to do some shopping. Two of his shipmates asked to come along and the foursome went off to White Front, the Costco of its day.
They filled our VW Bug with loads of consumer goods ranging from Ivory Soap to disposable diapers bound for friends and relatives back home in India. Each man had a list from his wife. In a moment of improbability, they stopped by on the way back to the ship to pick me up from my softball game.
Question: How many rolls of toilet paper and packages of disposable diapers did it take to fill up a Bug laden with five adults? Answer: in such circumstances, there is no such thing as a filled up VW Bug.
Based on the NPR story and our experience, and the fact that the Oakland church has a plan to support such forays into the biosphere of America’s stores, I must conclude that there are lots of first mates and crewmen from scores of ships making port in the U.S. who spend their off-days on land with shopping lists from their wives.
My sample of two also indicates that the shoppers invariably are shopping for others, seldom themselves.
Judy (especially, since she drove and was the on-board domestic expert for the shipmates) and I have gotten lots of mileage from telling the story of our Seattle shopping spree with three new friends from India. We still can, of course. But it will feel like whenever you describe a pristine trail you think you have discovered to a couple that, as it turns out, have tramped that trail for years. “Oh, you mean that trail!”
People of a Certain Age, we have spent much of our lives establishing our uniqueness, our individuality. Have you, like me, concluded that, in so many ways, the more we have tried to be unique, the more we seem to have in common with at least some others?
A part of the business of growing up was focused on encouragements like “Stand up for yourself,” “Be who you are,” and “Like snowflakes, we are all unique.” That exceptionalism is often tempered by cultures and/or families that highlight community obligations and responsibilities, encouragement not to stand out in a crowd. Perhaps it is natural for people raised to be individuals to think that significant experiences in their lives are unique.
Logically, with seven billion people on Earth, there are bound to be some repeats. Whenever something different happens in our lives, we sometimes become aware of something similar happening to someone else.
At times, there is virtue in not being unique, like when you realize that others have lost loved ones and survived after the loss. Feeling connected to the on-going flow of humanity, at one (or nearly so) with others of like mind and experience, conveys the warmth of belongingness, a satisfaction born of being “a part of” rather than “the only.”
I think a part of the satisfaction of Thanksgiving and the allure of Christmas (the secular version) lies in the connectedness these holidays encourage us to celebrate in the company of others.
Of course, it does not matter, in the larger scheme of things, whether or not our day with the merchant marines was unique. The fun comes from hearing a story nearly fifty years later that reminds you of a good time in your own life.
I wonder if those guys on the freighter, who would be our age at least and likely not at sea any more for a living, remember a particular shopping trip in a VW Bug is Seattle?
Daniel E. White
December 2, 2015