I think there is something either very wrong, very different or possibly very right about it. I feel like I get into unusual situations of trying to help, and sometimes failing.

Yesterday’s episode, I’m standing in line at Somerville’s building 19. Building 19 is a trashy store, of which they are proud, and Somerville’s is in a dead mall and is perhaps the trashiest. So, I’m in line, and a boy with batteries in his hand comes up and stands right at the corner of the counter between the register space and the customer space; clearly he knew the woman at the register. I’m mildly annoyed in an entitled yuppie, customers should come first kind of way, because I know the kid is going to want something right when she is done with the person in front of me. My internal dialogue decides to wait and watch, rather than be a haughty, attention-demanding wench. I am smugly self-satisfied and rewarded when the kid jumps in and she starts helping him with no concern for the line of customers.

Right about now, given the intro, you’re probably thinking “What the fuck did that bitch, Dee-Rob, do? Jesus, can’t she just relax for Christ’s sake? It’s the day after Christmas.”

So the woman at the register pulls from under the counter a battery-powered toy, the kid hands her the batteries and after struggling to open the batteries she starts dumping one then two into the hole. Only she’s dumping 9-volt batteries into the compartment, the rectangular ones with both contacts on top. So I stop her and start explaining that there’s no way a 9-volt gets dropped into a hole, since you usually have to plug the two contacts directly into something. (In my head, I’m thinking, “Doesn’t everyone know about the contacts on 9-volts? How else could you lick it and get shocked.”)

The woman doesn’t really speak English, and she’s clearly annoyed at my intervention. “No, it takes batteries. Here.” She points to the hole.

“Yeah, I know, but not that kind. That kind plugs in.” I try to gesture plugging and point to the contacts.

“No, batteries.”

“Yes. Round batteries. Not square.”

“No. Batteries. Here.”

By now, the boy is helping too, pointing, “Don’t the batteries go here?”

“Yeah, yes, they do.” I can now see the battery compartment, where it’s marked “Size C.” “Yes, see here, where it says ‘C,’ you need the batteries that say letter C, these say 9. It’s a different kind. You need round ones,” I circle my fingers.

He runs off to the battery rack.

The woman shrugs her shoulders, stares at me a little and then starts ringing up the calendars I was buying. She says nothing to the boy or me about the toy.

When I’m done, the boy is still at the battery rack, confusedly looking at them all. I can’t help but walk over to “help” some more. Together we look through all of the batteries (it’s a discount store, though, so there is no neat arrangement of all types and sizes.) There are no C batteries to be found.

I can’t tell whether it’s his English or his lack of comprehension of battery sizes, but he basically held up every kind and doublechecked if they would work. I tried to explain that only the correct size would work.

In the end, I had to walk away while he still stared at all of the other batteries and mumbled something about “I guess I’ll have to put it back.”

End scene

I wonder whether I helped him, because he didn’t end up with a toy and useless batteries (by the way she was opening the batteries with abandon, it didn’t seem like money would be changing hands). Or maybe I just got in the way, I don’t know.

Meanwhile, it makes me wonder if all over the country there are various people thinking they have broken items, simply because they can’t follow the complexities of battery sizing.