by Tom P
The following is a true story about a recent experience I had while shopping at the local WalMart. I hope you find it as eye-opening as I did.
One recent, busy afternoon at WalMart, I finished shopping and headed for the checkout lanes to complete my visit. The lines were quite long so I found myself wishing that I had started with a shopping cart because my arms were already getting tired from the heavy load. Most of the people ahead of me had full carts so I figured that I was in for a long, tedious wait. Suddenly a little bearded man appeared behind me, and then quickly stepped into the line next to me as he surveyed the other lanes looking for the shortest wait. His unique appearance caught my attention. He looked like a person one might imagine seeing at a foreign market. He wore a tight fitting green tweed sport coat, a little hat, and had a long pointed beard. His cheeks were darkly tanned and deeply wrinkled. His eyes looked intelligent, the best I could tell. As he darted between lines evaluating his options I said to him, “You can’t win.” He smiled and fell into line behind me. “Now perhaps I could speak to him,” I thought to myself, but before I was able to do so another younger man fell into line behind him and the two started speaking in a language I was not familiar with. Now, I can identify a half dozen or more languages, but this one was completely unfamiliar to me, so I seized the opportunity and blurted out, “Now that’s a language I am not familiar with.” The younger, more western looking man replied, “We are speaking Romanian,” rolling his “R’s” as you would imagine. Finally this conversation was off and running and we would have plenty of time because of the long line, if only my arms would hold out!
“You are both from Romania?” I asked. “Yes,” the younger man replied. Being curious about the older gentleman who had first caught my attention, I nodded in his direction and asked, “Does he speak English too?” The younger man’s reply was, “My father does speak English, but when I am around he prefers for me to do the speaking.” “So this is your father?” I asked. The son smiled and nodded in the affirmative. “Were you born here?” I asked the son. “No, I was born in Romania. I was 14 when we immigrated to the United States in 1982.” With a little quick math in my head I had the son pegged at around 43 years old, which corresponded with his appearance. That would place his father at perhaps somewhere around 70. Wanting to make this conversation count, I asked “Wasn’t Romania a communist country for most of your lives?” “Yes, Romania was put under Russian communist control in 1947,” the son replied.
“What was it like living under communism?” I asked. Continue reading
