As Americans Gradually Accept Their Growing Mental Health Needs, Access to Online Help and Walk-In Sessions at Retail Stores Increases

So many red baskets.

I MUST ADMIT… I worked at CVS Pharmacy in Arlington, Massachusetts during my junior and senior years of high school. I hope it was only that long. I may have worked there the summer after my freshman year of college.

I worked two-to-three days a week, after school, adding more hours in the summer. The endlessly repeating sentimental pop songs. The odd yellow glare of the fluorescent lights. None of it was especially remarkable, and I’m sure it added to my teenage ennui. The employee discount was a small highlight. Thinking back, I’m sure some of my co-workers employed the employee five-finger discount. I was too law-abiding for all of that. I worked the cash register. I stocked shelves. I cleaned up before closing, with the insanely loud vacuum cleaner on the industrial gray carpet. At 6:30 on gray, wintry Sunday mornings, I helped put together the enormous Sunday edition of The Boston Globe, before the store opened, with the manager, Ibrahim. He was a kind man, who had two small children. Ibi was an immigrant from a country that I cannot recall. Maybe Pakistan. Maybe Iran. We’d stuff four or five sections of the paper into each other until each Sunday Globe became a mountain of newsprint. Remember when newspapers…