October 26, 2004
As a general rule, I despise shopping altogether. I am not of the typical (and I quote...) 'non-male' species who relishes in each undecided moment of, "Should I get the pink or do you think I'm more of a 'periwinkle person?'" throughout a seventeen hour period. I have a list, I stick to the list, I go and I leave. No dorking around.Take shopping for groceries - we all need 'em and I refuse to become a complete recluse by having them delivered to my door.
I grab a cart. I hate grocery carts. Not just because I naturally always get the one with the cocked wheel which you cannot steer around the end of an aisle, and not just because it reminds me of this scary movie I saw two years ago that still makes me cringe, it's mostly because of my mother...
When I was little, the grand adventure of the month was driving ALL the way into town from our house on the Lake to get groceries with my mom (I was just hoping to obtain another candy bar which "You'll only get if you're a VEEERRRRY good little girl, OKAY?"). The distance seemed great and I was ever in awe of these unfrequented surroundings - the town, the cars, the people, the shops, the painted lines on the city roads... So different and entirely consuming to a tiny mind. And so we ventured into our local Sentry store and began the grand excursion - shopping for our family's sustenance.
My mom NEVER got the cock wheeled grocery cart. No, instead, hers was like the stealth bomber of grocery carts; masterfully gliding from one aisle to the next as she grabbed one item and another without even looking sideways at the shelf from which she picked her egg noodles or ground beef. She NEVER was entangled with the afternoon stockers who were meticulously replacing chicken and dumplings with oversized pallets - NEVER did she have to endure their over-emphasized, exhaled frustration as they backed their entire rig to the end of the isle just so someone could reach the sliced tomatoes in a can. She NEVER seemed to have an obstacle; well, unless she brought her daughter along...
I always wanted to push the cart. She usually let me, thinking that THIS would be the momentous occasion when I would NOT run the front of the mobil metal basket directly into her ankles as she stopped to inspect a head of lettuce (such an optimist), but I cannot recall a time when I did not run into her poor ankles. If I wasn't pushing the cart, I was blindly following, getting lost from one aisle to the next, innocently picking at broccoli pieces just within my reach and eventually wailing for my mommy when I couldn't find her amongst the fruit. I even recall 'planning' where she would be so that I could, at some point, be reunited with her before she abandoned me in the store...
"Alright, she has to get cereal and bread and then some more pretzels for Dad - that will put her in Aisle #2 in about zero minus three minutes..."
Of course, she was inevitably circling around the corner of Aisle #3 by the time I got there and so we never met until I frantically searched, found her at the checkout counter, as she calmly placed items onto a really cool piece of rotating rubber. But this was NEVER the end of her struggles.
Now came the heartfelt cries of a candy eyed kid in desperate need of a Hershey bar (which were adequately placed within my reach by the nice folks at Sentry). My high pitched wails begging for chocolate were often accompanied by a look of sheer terror as my mother would whip around, bare her perfect white teeth and growl, slowly so I would take in full understanding and without moving her lips, "Be quiet. Or I'm leaving you... here." I always expected foam or dripping slobbber, but she was too elegant for that. Than she would turn to the cashier to write her check with a smile that spanned from ear to ear, giving nothing to the implecation that I should possibly be beaten by the time we reached the car. It helped that she NEVER had the bitchy 16-year-old clerk looking at her with contempt as if to imply she wanted to spit gum into my mother's hair just to go home early...
So now why is that whenever I go shopping, I always get the shitty set of wheels? Pay back? Does my mother call ahead? And why is every other customer completely oblivious to the fact that other human beings populate the earth (this includes your local Sentry Store) and might contain this dramatically singular need to reach for that family size jar of JIF peanut butter while they're parking RIGHT THERE pondering creamy or chunky?? Do you not have a list?? Shall I draw one up for YOU? It's either there on your little list or it isn't - creamy or chunky! Add Tylenol to your list because I'm going to follow you home screaming for a half hour, wondering WHY you didn't just WRITE IT DOWN before you came here!
It also bothers me that no one smiles and no one says "excuse me" as they race at 45 MPH down Aisle Seven for ketchup. Especially you GUYS who refuse to use a grocery cart at all. It's amazing to me. Just amazing.
"Ohhhhh, it'll all fit into this one here pretty little hand held basket... And if it doesn't, I'm making two trips..."
But that's alright. It's arlight, for I no longer pay attention to all the pathetically depressed people who do not smile, I simply go on to smile myself at anyone within a 10 foot radius (well, not if they're behind me or just beyond my peripheral vision) or merely to myself if no one is around. I still crack jokes at the aging check out lady (even if her demeanor screams KILL! KILL! KILL!) and I still laugh heartily at the man who thinks I want paper bags instead of plastic each time, though I've probably told him seventy times that it IS better to use plastic. I still wait patiently for the young man who absolutely must get out of this store ahead of me or for the older woman who takes her time writing out numbers on her Garfield the Cat checks and I still ride the back of my cart, filled with groceries, all the way to my car...