Blogatron

You have no idea how long I sat here trying to come up with a title for this one.

I have discovered that I am prone to bouts of despair in the grocery store. I almost added an "irrational" to that sentence, but I'm not sure it applies. Going grocery shopping is like any unpleasant chore, but elevated to epic proportions: It's tiring, especially when you have to include the getting there and the getting back on foot. It's lit by fluorescent lights, the scourge of modern existence. It always, universally in my experience, involves listening to the most offensive lite-music station that can be found in the region one inhabits. It requires thinking about spending money, saving money, and having very little money even for life's essentials.* Really, you only need to add an element of dirt or smelliness to make the experience completely degrading (and at the Key Food in our old haunting grounds of Queens, that was often supplied as well).

Yesterday I set myself up for extreme distress by going to the grocery store a) on a sad gray day; b) on a Sunday; c) during a period where I am struggling to find something to bring for lunches that I am not entirely sick of, no please no more hummus no no no. I knew I was doomed when I saw that every single shopping cart was taken from the front of the store. The aisles were filled with people who, like me, were clearly unable to deal. The wares were so fakey "Wowza!"-packaged and unappealing and overpriced as to send even the cheeriest person into the depths of a philosophical crisis. I was nearly rendered incompetent to handle my own affairs by this one woman with weirdly colored, overprocessed but still strangely unkempt, gigantic helmet hair who kept parking her cart smack across the end of aisles, and then being genuinely surprised and apologetic when I. could. not. get. by. AGAIN. By the end of the bread aisle, where there are these out-of-place mirrors angled over the top shelf,** I looked like someone had stolen my favorite toy and felt like three scoops of death on a one-scoop stick.

The nice thing about grocery store trauma is that, unlike so many other parts of life, you can actually run away from it. At least until next week. The sweet breath of freedom cooled my brow in the checkout aisle, and I almost kissed the bagger, who must spend all her free time playing Tetris, so neatly and soundly did she fit all the items into my old-lady cart, so gently did she cradle the bread.

Point? Not today. That's it. Nothing more to see here.

*Free country-western song title for you composers out there: "Vine-Ripened Tomatoes or Next Month's Rent?" Do with it what you will, but send me a copy.

**I guess so that you can see the tops of the loaves(?), but also handy for craning one's neck to confirm that you do, indeed, look like crap from a truly bizarre angle, under unflattering lighting, while frowning.

Posted by hilatron at March 29, 2004 09:10 PM | TrackBack