the kmart bag

This morning I grabbed a plastic grocery store bag from underneath the sink for my tupperware lunch, pulled out a Kmart bag and instantly was transported to an era of class shame from my youth that I had not thought about for years, if not decades. Family outings to Kmart abounded for us during my coming up years. Each trip instigated in me great shame and fear of being discovered by classmates who, I was convinced, would run to school the next day and shout throughout the hallways my immigrant family’s shopping locations. I am pained by this for many reasons now as an almost 40 year old adult. My class shame at being associated with what Kmart apparently represented in the late 70s and early 80s makes more sense to me when I remember the shame and fear that permeated much of my youth, not just around class issues but around gender, sexuality, and race. All were inchoately working together to stunt and disgrace and embarrass. I do not remember ever hearing the words class, race, or gender until my first year of college—concepts that structured my world in its gripping silence and lack of open discourse. How might my life have been different if my family, ethnic community, school, teachers, counselors, or other adults had given words to the contradictions and complications of mine—and so many youths’—reality?