An Episode in Culture Shock

"That is too heavy for you!" He cries, hurrying towards me and taking the bucket of kitty litter from me as I emerge from the pet needs aisle. The older cashier and young bag boy grin at each other; obviously most adolescent sized women don't go stumbling through the grocery store carrying things half their size. "Why didn't you get a cart?" The bag boy asks, lugging the bucket up onto the conveyor belt. I say something about exercise and pull my cloth bazaar bag from my purse. The thin young man seems appreciative of my environmentalist gesture and cheerfully bags the rest of my groceries as I pay the cashier. Maybe it's his dark skin and lightly accented English but I suddenly feel like I am back in Azerbaijan. I automatically count how many males are looking at me, which is quite a lot since it is immediately clear that though the bag boy only outweighs me by a dozen pounds, he will squire me to my vehicle with the majority of the load and the others are going to tease him. My glance darts around to the ground, the sky, to my peripherals. As we walk towards the car I find that I can no longer make eye contact. I'm walking a few steps ahead, mentally telling myself not to walk so quickly. What is my problem? I find the intimacy of the help unbearable. I unlock the car and gesture towards the passenger side, "You can put it down on the floor there" I say, my gaze staying at a safe unfocused chest height. You probably look really bizarre and rude. American women are perfectly capable of casual interaction with service persons! "Have a great day!" I chirp at the last moment, hoping this will make up for my awkwardness. He's already off, cheerfully helping another customer. I spend the rest of the drive home wondering what triggered such a vivid emotional response. Was it the small Azerbaijan-sized onions in the produce section? Was it that choosing between the brand-name cat litter or cheaper publix kind I vividly remembered Mathias digging concrete dust out of our crawlspace into a laundry bucket for Baby Cat's first litter box? (I went with the off-brand.) Or maybe it was the bag boy himself, something (forgive me) but not-quite-American-yet about him? Or maybe it is I who am not quite American. There is one thing that is for sure and that is that Azerbaijan is not leaving me anytime soon.