I used to bring Judah to the Italian market every Friday after preschool to pick up all the fixings for Friday night pizza. He came to know Michelle, the woman behind the deli counter, as she would often give him samples of the ham and a taste of feta, maybe a sliver of blue.
Not to sound schmaltzy, but it’s not as fun doing this alone. I’m sure there are some intriguing points of psychology to explore around that. Like, how I assume I’m more interesting and approachable and therefore act more extroverted when I have an adorable cheese fiend riding in my cart.
Children just add more levity to these sorts of interactions. They’re like social ice breakers. They make it harder for people to be grumpy with each other when they’re discussing cured meat.
There was a store similar to this that I went to with my mother when I was a kid growing up in Toronto. It was so busy on weekends, the police assigned a traffic cop to managing the flow of Mercedes and Beemers (we had an Oldsmobile) in and out of the parking lot. I have no idea what my mom actually needed in there, and I was certainly passed the charming, do-no-wrong, cute phase of my life so there wasn’t much in the way of parent-child-deli counter interactions. But I do remember liking the couscous salad. It had currants and peppers and an orange juice dressing.
Today, when I came in to get my proscuitto, pepperoni and roasted peppers, there was a group of men having a boisterous conversation in the cafe, in a language I couldn’t identify. The light was beautiful, the scene a story, so I decided to get the camera out of the car. Somewhere in the back of my mind, the Alison that was going to walk back in there had the balls to start snapping photos of random strangers. As it turns out, that Alison was not available. So it was just me.
In my journalism days, I would have had no problem going up to these guys, microphone in hand, ready to strike up a conversation about anything from hand-washing to Donald Trump. As a photographer, I was stumped. And it showed.
I hung around the counter. I bought myself a coffee. I took a couple of surreptitious shots from the hip. I felt like a spy and not in an exciting, fancy car, exploding pen kind of way. I felt entirely conspicuous, exactly how one is bound to feel while attempting to be invisible.
The group dispersed, leaving their drained mugs and crumb covered plates as the only evidence of their meeting. I saw a couple of other potential shots but it would have meant asking certain people to move out of the way, so that wasn’t on.
In the end, this was the only picture I had the guts to take: random dude buying basil and bocconccini in his slides. Methinks there needs to be a workshop on street photography in my future. Me also thinks this would be a lot easier with a less noticeable camera, like maybe one hidden in the rim of my oversized sunglasses right next to the satellite link to HQ.