Senior Year on Meeker Street

In the fall of 2020, which was admittedly the low for me of an already poor year, I started working at my local crystal store. It happened on a total whim, and unexpectedly I was thrown into what was going to become one of the focal points of my life my senior year of high school. Moore’s is a family-owned business, and being an employee there is eerily similar to being adopted. I felt like I just gained two new moms in my manager and in the owner, along with an overflowing handful of sisters. 

Both quickly and unexpectedly, this job became an outlet for me to learn so much about myself, but also to begin to comprehend how human everyone really is. We all know that other people are going through things that we don't understand, or aren't aware of. Everyone knows that people fight invisible battles. We've all seen the Pinterest quotes about being kind because we cannot read minds, and we understand that the human experience is collectively shared, not individually undergone.

It is different, though, in such a niche environment like Moore's. It's very storybook. People come looking for healing. During this search, whether or not it is with faith in metaphysics, people reveal to you why it is that they are there. This fact, this sharing of experience, is what makes this position so unique. I know a million 18-year-olds stuck in a transitional retail job, but not many who must serve their customers on such an emotional level. 

Moore’s is full of a cast of characters that is more entertaining than any soap opera you could possibly watch. I meet so, so many people every day, and in different ways, they all stick with me. I am able to learn something from all of them. They are all adding pieces to my mosaic every day. 

My favorite customer (as least, at the moment), is a sweet Vietnamese writer who is approximately 4 feet in height. I think she's got to be in her late sixties, and she wears a face mask every visit that depicts the bottom half of a smiling husky dog's face, and with the way her eyes curl up when she smiles gives her an appearance of constant joy that influences the energy around her. She tells me about growing up in the party scene in Hollywood in the ’60s, and how her mother was a singer. She tells me every day that I look beautiful, and that I am changing her life with each conversation (when really, she is the one changing mine). 

Then there is our mailman, John, who is quite possibly my favorite person on earth. I mean this in a totally literal sort of way, too. John is somewhat reminiscent of Santa Claus, with his great facial hair, hearty laugh, and how he is never without a large bag full of packages. John is the kind of person who tells you that you look great when you haven't slept the whole weekend, tells you to keep smiling, calls everyone “darling,” and means every word of it. When John asks how you're doing, he wants to know. He doesn't ask because it's a courtesy, he asks because he'll go home and wonder if he doesn't. 

Wayne, the man who owns the used bookstore across the street, comes in quite often. I love to read, and he loves that I love to read, Whenever I visit his shop, he gives me old Scarlet Witch and The Vision comics to take home. I love Wayne because he is a reader first and a businessman second. He just wants people to enjoy good books, He is simple and kind to all of us. The genuine nature of our conversations touches me.

And of course, there was Paul, the 24-year-old graduate student visiting from Canada who I fell irrevocably in love with for a total of 17 minutes, despite the fact he was objectively too old for me, and too completely disinterested. 

It is a constantly revolving door, but some stick with me long after they leave. A group came in a few weeks ago, all in their twenties. One of the men stuck out to me, he complimented all of us employees, asked us how our day was going, extended appreciation and kindness in a very direct and intentional way. Fifteen minutes into their visit, one of the girls in this group pulled me aside. She told me that one of their friends, gesturing to the man who had gone so out of his way to be kind, had lost his brother two days prior to suicide. His friends were taking him out of the house for the first time. She asked what sort of crystals might help him in his grief. 

This moment stood out to me because I realized what might be the motivation behind the man's previous attentive care towards me and my co-workers. I thought about how as he goes about the rest of his day, someone might cut him off in traffic or cut him in line at the grocery store. Little, irritating things we all can find ourselves guilty of doing. I realize they will never know what kind of time he is going through. After my shift that day I let every car in, I waved at the grocery clerk, and I sent an old teacher an email to check-in. It made me think so much about the ripple effect each of us has the potential to cause. 

It is moments like this where I feel so grateful to be sharing this human experience with billions of other people. Reveling in the pain and heartbreak and loss of people you may never see again opens you up to the fact that every experience you have had, has likely been felt by someone prior, and it is likely that in the future, another human will feel it too. It can be so lonely, to experience such intense emotions without the consideration of the existence of such similarly shared experience. 

Spirituality looks different to me now, because of this job. I look at religion, church, prayer, sacrificial practice, thought, dreams, and death so differently than I used to. I used to think about these existential ideas as fitting into boxes. I had to either be an atheist or be a church-goer. I had to burn incense in the correct direction in order to cleanse a space. I had to pray or manifest within the confines of rules for them to be divinely listened to. I had to check off the boxes and label myself as someone who understood why I was here in order to have a connection to something larger than myself. Working in a place, however, that bridges the gap between so many kinds of people though, changed that. The one universal experience we all share as a species is how we feel. How we fear, and love, and suffer.  These experiences are divine in themselves. My religion, my sense of spirituality, is now derived from my ability to serve people in the midst of their human experience. It is now derived from taking an introspective look at not only how I think about life and death, but why. I ask more questions now.

Elwood P. Dowd says in the 1950 film Harvey, “They tell me about the big, terrible things they've done and the wonderful things they'll do. Their hopes, and their regrets, and their loves, and their hates. All very large, because nobody ever brings anything small into a bar.” Much like the bar in which Elwood spends a depressing amount of his time, nobody ever brings anything small into the crystal shop on Meeker.