It was June. I walked to the post office to mail an oversized envelope. It was after midday and there was a line. We were quiet. Patient. We were strangers to each other.

It took a while, but when the person in front of me advanced to the window I saw that there were at least ten of us still waiting. Behind me was a young couple conversing in Chinese. Behind them was a Caucasian woman in late middle age who seemed rather dressed up for a casual summer afternoon. Further along, there was a burly Caucasian guy dressed in faded cargo pants and Birkenstocks, followed by two women with the aspect of my new Iranian neighbors.

And so the line went, back to the glass door at the entrance. It was a representation of the amalgam of my village’s population, a bit of this, a bit of that.

Unexpectedly the burly guy spoke. He was looking toward the postal worker who was behind a plexiglass shield with her head bent to her task, putting postage on a package.

He made the observation aloud that there was only one postal worker (implying the place was understaffed). He added that her fellow employees might be on a break for lunch. From behind the window, she answered: “Yes, we do get time for lunch.” I thought I glimpsed her smiling to herself.

There was silence before he spoke again. This time his voice was louder and he addressed all of us. He made a proclamation: “Chris Christie is running for president!” He waited for acknowledgment. No one else spoke, so I replied, “Yes he is, along with about ten other people.” In other words, so what?

In response, he declared: “If he wins, I’m moving to Poland.”

If he had said Hawaii, it would not have come as a surprise. Hawaii figures in discussions about where to escape to, a holiday in the sunshine. But Poland isn’t known for its sunshine. In fact, even though it is a republic it is better known for German extermination camps in World War II.

I admit the prospect of an American seeking refuge in Poland was an enticing discussion, but it was off-topic so I ignored it. So did everyone else.

Into the silence I asked: “Are you saying Chris Christie is your biggest worry in the current political climate?”

He seemed to have not heard. He stood, his shoes planted wide and firmly and said in his proclamation voice, “And now we have runaway inflation!”

Viewed through the front window of the post office, those of us on line would have appeared to be a still life. No one moved. It could have been the Last Supper or the raising of the flag on Iwo Jima, a timeless painting or a photograph of any place where once there were real people.

Each time he spoke, I answered. This was odd for me in one respect. As the world around us has become cluttered with bad attitude, as people have felt free of the constraints of civility, I made a rule for myself: Listen to crazies on line at the market and department store but do not engage. On this day I broke my rule for the second time in as many years.

“Runaway inflation? Isn’t that what we called it when President Reagan was in office,” I said. “What do you read?” I added.

Instead of answering, his voice came again even louder: “And what about the Deficit! Our government owes so much money!”

I told him “The money we owe is the Debt, not the Deficit.” I asked again: “What do you read?”

Silence. Then, given we were in a public space populated by people from around the world, his next comment was a doozy.

He announced: “Immigration is the problem. Immigrants are overrunning the country. They are taking all our jobs, and they bring crime.”

Like the topic of Americans escaping to Poland, immigrants taking our jobs being a subject worried about by a man casually dressed on a weekday afternoon in a somewhat wealthy suburb was another surprise.

Still no one else spoke, and I had a space in which to wonder if that centerpiece of confused thinking on line with me was perhaps worrying about a threat to the livelihood of grape pickers in California.

His disdain for immigrants merited a response even before he added, “All those Chinese.” The still life around us remained preternaturally still. His words hung in the air.

I answered. “Immigration has been the life blood of our country. Immigrants bring us their intellect, their hard work. Our country is a nation of immigrants. Are you saying my parents and I should not be here?”

After his usual pause he said directly to me across the eight feet that separated us, “Well, you won’t be around to see it anyway,” alluding to my thatch of white hair.

Poland had come as a surprise. This personal attack did not. I’ve spent a lifetime watching inadequate speakers turn vicious, watching low minds lost in a conversation they should not have started, watching them change the subject when they think they are about to lose a verbal contest.

Was there more to this? Sure, but you get the idea. A man with no information decided to unburden himself of his prejudices among benign, non-aggressive strangers, mostly women.

This fleeting event joins the larger historical landscape. Ex-President Trump has credit for setting the example, making it okay to dredge up from the dark recesses of his mind and say aloud the kind of words that in an earlier time would have labeled him a dimwit, devoid of reason and knowledge. Our guy in cargo pants for a few minutes brought the essence of Trump to our village post office: racist, sexist, anti-democracy. He was a lost soul who has no idea how to value being an American.

Rebecca Rosenblatt Gilliar

Great Neck