I’ve never been in this store. It is maybe a three minute walk from my house. This is a neighborhood convenience store whose named #2 suggests a #1 somewhere in Lexington. I do not know where #1 is. Convenience stores are everywhere: in big cities, in strip malls, in gas stations, even in Lexington neighborhoods. We can enter them or not enter them, and whether we enter them or not, we can, more or less, assume what they are selling. I assume this store sells snacks, Bud Light, toilet paper, candy. I assume there is a guy at the register, maybe behind a plexiglass barrier, keeping guard of the pints of cheap bourbon, condoms, and cigarettes on the shelves behind him. I imagine a key to the bathroom you have to ask for (it’s connected to an aged and stained piece of wood) and one of those reusable 1970s towel rollers, where the soiled towel goes round and round and you’re not sure you really want to dry your hands on it. When I walk my dog past this store, I often see empty vape packaging and finished, tiny Fireball bottles laying in the grass. Sometimes, the owner takes a grill outside and grills hotdogs and hamburgers. I’m not sure if they are for sale or just for him. I’ve never asked. I’ve never been inside this store. I’ve never spoken with him.
Think of all the things we see or pass by or partially encounter but have never entered or been a part of. One buys a cookbook of a cuisine from a country one has never visited. One has a celebrity crush on someone one will never meet. One studies a language in high school from a country one has never been to. There is always some restaurant one sees on TV or reads about but never dined at. There are neighbors we’ve never met no matter how many times we’ve walked or driven by their homes. There are books we own but have never read. There are movies and shows spread across our streaming platforms we scroll past but never click on. There are thoughts and emotions we hold deep inside and never share. Each moment carries its own assumptions into our imaginations: culture, people, reading, entertainment. Maybe we know what they are; maybe we assume we know. Don’t we often prefer the assumption to the encounter itself?
So many things we never do. I’ve never entered this store. I’ve never been to Morocco. I’ve never snow boarded. . .bucket lists. Ambition. Wishful thinking. A life of something, but part of that something always includes never. This point is not about regret. This point is not about missing out. This point is simply about not entering that metaphoric convenience store located near you and assuming you know it instead. I’ve never been inside, yet I have the pretentiousness to assume what it looks like inside.
Isn’t this how games such as “Would you rather?” and “Who’d you do?” work? You are not having sex with these people whose names are thrown about as curiosity or contest. It’s a game of imagination and never doing. We never do most things. Math, it would seem, proves that we never do more things than those we eventually do. There is probably an equation for it such as D = 4/5 to the second power or E = 7/8 of M. Tom Waits, in “Ruby’s Arms,” declares he will never kiss someone’s lips again. He’s at least done it once. But now, this act can only take the role of imagination or “never do.” Lindsey Buckingham claims that he’ll never go back again, but was he really there in the first place? Cat Stevens says he’ll “never, never, never” “make the same mistake.” But that means he probably will. The math says so.
And memories work this way as well. All the memories we pass by but never enter. The memory sits there, mostly lost in our brains or huddled within our emotions, but not engaged with: “that time…” “that place…” “that person…” Memories reflect the done (it is a memory, after all) but not necessarily the do again. Memories, though, may not even reflect the done. Most memories, it seems, are likely false. They may have never occurred at all. They are representations built internally (within emotions and imagination) that are not the event itself but an image of the event. I remember that time. But that time is just an image in my imagination. The time itself is long gone. Maybe I was there. Maybe I wasn’t. Whatever I remember is just an assumption — a collection of items, words, moments, acts that aggregate or that are aggregated into a representation I believe is “real.”
This image I share here is a representation of a store in my neighborhood. I have never entered this store. But I can easily imagine what goods line its shelves: Pringles cans, M&Ms, Lysol, Charmin, ramen, lighters, beef jerky, toothpaste. The things we see or pass by or encounter but have never entered follow archetypes. Copies of copies of interest: shops, countries, cuisine, beaches, people, horoscopes, stores, political beliefs. Ours is an age of the archetype. Familiarity. The same. If you’ve seen one convenience store, you’ve seen them all.
If I ever enter this store, will I be disillusioned? Not by the Bud Light or the Doritos but by my failure to match in my imagination what a neighborhood convenience store should embody? All imagination, at some point, pivots among ideals and romanticization. What if I enter, and it looks nothing like all the other convenience stores I have been in? What if it fails to live up to the narratives I repeatedly tell myself as I walk my dog by the store most days, noticing the discarded packaging and cigarette butts and weeds sticking out of its sidewalk and occasional hamburgers on the grill? What if it isn’t an archetypical convenience store in Lexington, Kentucky selling shitty beer and powered donuts in a box that somehow never go bad? What if it is something else? I’ve told myself that there is no reason to enter this store because it’s the same as any other store I’ve been in. I have enough sameness in my life. At least, that’s how I imagine my life. I don’t have knowledge about this store. I only have assumptions. That, too, is maybe how I imagine my life. It seems, to me, that this is how most people assume what knowledge is.
Imagination is another type of assumption. I think a great deal about assumptions: the assumptions we make based on a Facebook profile, a social media post, a dating profile, political beliefs, resistance and oppression, the clothes someone wears, the place someone works, the things one owns, and so on. Our digital culture is based largely on assumptions. When an algorithm scans Internet browsing or Instagram posts or Tik Tok views, it makes various assumptions about behavior, politics, consumption, interests. Assumptions are based on feelings or the more elusive affect of a given status. I believe. I think. I know. These, too, are mostly assumption based declarations posed as conviction but really are nothing more than imaginary gestures. Computer code acts accordingly. So do people. Knowledge, no matter how much we insist, is not affect. Affect is a bodily assumption translated as knowledge. But it’s not knowledge.
Knowledge is always elusive. I assume I know this store. I assume I know this conflict. I assume I know this person. Why do we conflate assumption with knowledge? Maybe pedagogical catch phrases such as “critical thinking” should be changed to “critical assumptions.” Nobody knows anything. They assume. If it’s not obvious to anyone who follows me online, I’m fed up with all the pretend knowledge floated on social media. Virtue knowledging. In sound bite posts and showing off, people virtue knowledge their supposed grasp of the most complicated issues enveloping us. Most people may have little to say about convenience stores around the corner from their homes, but they have everything to say about the rest of the world. They are stuck in the never do. Never learn. Never try to learn. Assume. Pretend you’ve learned. Rely on archetypes you’ve internalized into an imagination you define as “real.” When you’ve seen one protest or outrage or claim or demand floating on a social media platform, you’ve seen them all. They are all the same copies of copies of copies.
I have often told myself that today is the day I enter that convenience store. If I go in, do I have to buy anything? If I go in, will I want to buy anything? A loaf of bread that can sit on the counter for two months without going moldy? Floss? Paper towels? A Snickers bar? Some Fireball? I can pretend I need these things and buy them. I could, of course, buy these things anywhere. I could pretend to buy them here or somewhere else. After all, we live in the world of pretend. Pretend is the comfortable never do of knowing. I’m a never do convenience store shopper. I never do it. I pretend I’m going to do it. In that way, I virtue knowledge like the rest of you all out there on Facebook and Instagram and Twitter (X) pretending to know this world via representations of profiles and ideas and ideologies. A representation is, of course, not the thing. A representation is without a code. A representation is your assumption of the thing. You code your assumptions.
Besides, I buy my food at Whole Foods. Not a convenience store.
