I Found My People

You hear a lot of talk about finding your people or your “tribe” these days. The idea is that we can find comfort and support, and enlightenment and fun from a community of kindred spirits. But what if your tribe isn’t who you think it is? What if we’re way off the mark hanging out with those book club and Martha Stewart centrepiece kind of people?

Because I’m afraid I may have found my people. My real people.

It was 10:30pm on the Sunday of Labour Day weeekend and I was trying to find a parking spot at my local Walmart. I was there to buy school supplies and thought I’d find one near the entrance.  But as I inched along, it was clear that all the spots were taken. I maneouvered between streams of young families and a multitude of cars coming and going in every direction and finally snagged a spot nowhere close to the entrance.

The store was equally jammed with shopping carts being pushed by families of four, five or six. At least I didn’t have my kids with me! That was the entire point of shopping so late at night. People were picking up clothes and groceries and toiletries, sure, but the school supply section was fully ransacked. I waltzed by happily because I was there for one thing: kid-sized water bottles. And some cheap containers for lunches, too, I guessed — as long as I was there. And, hmm, did Colum need any more school supplies? What are Grade Ones expected to bring anyway? Maybe I should have thought about this before.

Right, so they were sold out of water bottles. They were even sold out of those crappy reusable juice boxes I figured I could use in a pinch. The entire bottle section was torn apart like a toilet brush expo display at the end of Blogher. I picked up some semi-disposable Rubbermaid containers and grabbed a pack of pre-sharpened pencils just in case on the way out.

I pushed past the screaming throngs of desperate families with a big grin. You see? I’m not the only one still scrambling for school supplies at the last minute! In fact, I was looking relatively pulled together and organized in that Walmart line up. It was a good feeling.

These are my people, I thought.