The hippie co-op

This morning I went to the organic co-op to get tomatoes (which are just now coming ripe in Ireland).  I go about once a month because it's a bit a way from our house and any longer excursion onto Dublin roads can be an interesting, and life threatening, venture.  The co-op is wonderful with it's pudgy organic food, wonderfully seasonal, and it's warm vendors.  The issue is some of the members.  Many of the people you see shopping are dressed in hemp, rosy cheeked if younger, pleasantly weathered faces if older.  Now I imagine many of these people have serious spiritual and environmental ideals, ideals that promote being mindful of how we treat and interact with others and the environment, and yet they wander about the hall like automatons.  

Silly, naive me, to expect people to be mindful and polite just because their proclaiming health and indulging in alternative lifestyles.  Shove me in the back with a shopping cart and continue to blather on your cell phone without an acknowledgement or an apology.  Check.  Wander about aimlessly not caring who you knock into.  Check.  Stand there staring blankly while your teenager shoves in front of the line.  Check.  Have a 15 minute debate with the wine man while other people are waiting to pay.  Check.  Let you children run up and down the wooden ramp, the thuds of which, and the shrieking of whom reverberate though the hall.  Check.  Have impassioned conversation about who's screwing up the peat bogs or how Lidl and Aldi are the devils henchmen.  Yup.  I could blame it on the hippies, but the upscale food hall in the city centre is the same rude mess.