Grocery Stores and Chance Encounters

 

It was a beautiful, bright winter day and for the first time in almost week the streets were passable after a fierce storm that dumped nearly twelve inches of snow. I love grocery shopping after storms like this. You could hardly move through the congested aisles today but people were glad to be out and about so they accepted it with good grace and even a few laughs. No one gave me “that stare”---you know the one that says: what are you doing shopping on the weekend, old woman? You’ve got all week while I’m at work to get through these aisles. We were all there at the same time for the same reason. And like the snack aisle was the morning of super bowl, it had a celebratory feel. We had conquered a major snowstorm, shoveled our way out of confinement and now the sun was shining! Hallelujah!

But there were a few times in the store when I wished I’d had my old Camp Fire Girls whistle with me---once to direct the traffic jam in front of the milk cases. Another time to break up a fight in the vegetable department where a well dressed, aggressive woman and her husband couldn’t agree on whether to buy a bunch of carrots or a bag of baby carrots. She was being a bully about it and he was whiny but holding firm. I wanted to hand him a few bucks and tell him to buy his baby carrots. What’s the big deal? Don and I didn’t like the same brand of tooth paste so we had two tubes in the bathroom. If carrot man died in his sleep tonight you can bet his wife would wish she hadn’t been so priggish about the damn carrots. That fight in the grocery aisle would replay in her head for months. If you’re going to fight---especially in public---make it something worth fighting about like how to achieve world peace or which end of eatable panties do you start on…the top or the bottom?

They had a new display of hummingbird feeders at the store and fresh cut tulips in the plant department. Someone thinks spring is on the way. But the one thing I wish they had at the grocery store is an observation deck. I would sit up there with a tiny voice recorder and make notation on all the things I’d like to write about later on. I swear I could craft a passable novel if I could live inside the store like Novalee did in Billie Letts’ book, Where The Heart Is. I’ve often wished I had a microphone in my watch so I could talk to my wrist and describe fellow grocery shoppers. If I was young I could do that and people would assume I’m an undercover agent following someone around. At my age they’d just think I’m delusional and my distracted caregiver is near-by.

On the way home I stopped at Subway and the young clerk reminded me so much of Don. The kid was outgoing and friendly and the sort of person who treats people of all ages exactly the same. No patronizing tone or boredom in his voice because he had to wait on an old woman. I was his customer and he was focused on me and not the cute, young girls in line behind me. I had trouble saying I wanted a six inch sandwich on eight-grain honey oat bread and it came out something like I wanted half of eight grains of honey. “That didn’t come out right,” I told him. We both busted out laughing and then he said, “How about I just cut six inches off a 12 inch loaf of eight-grain honey oat bread?” Our senses of humors were simpatico and that doesn’t happen often with me. All the way down the line we were joking back and forth about silly things. But the big take-away from the chance encounter with “Don’s younger self” is it didn’t make me sad. It didn’t take me down. The widow lady didn’t cry on the way home. Life is good even if I did just spend last week living inside of a snow globe. ©