Lately, grocery shopping has been a chore. The heart
of Charm City is very charming but not very
fecund. Wal-Greens and Rite-Aids are not (!) grocery
stores, because man cannot subsist on cheap make-up
and Captain Morgan alone.
My apartment complex is accomodating to this...not
quite. My apartment complex attempts to be
accomodating to this. A shuttle will come on Saturday
to cart all who wish to get real food out to a
Safeway. Today, I did this. Today, I regret having
done this.
First off, I get dropped off at the Safeway and ask
the shuttle driver when she will be returning.
"Hour an haff."
Excuse me? What am I suppose to do at a Safeway for
the hour and twenty minutes I am not shopping? Read
about TomKat in People? No, I'll tell you what I did
- figure out how to keep the food in my buggy cool. I
had acquired all my produce and items of purchase in
ten minutes, and then was staring in disgust at all I
had amassed that required refrigerant methods of
maintenance. So, I decided the best thing was to hang
out in the cooler areas of the store: produce, dairy,
eggs, deli, etc.
In my maundering, I passed a blood pressure machine,
and figured I should sit down and find out what numbers I
should buy for PowerBall. 132 over 62 with a 56 bpm
pulse.
I used to post 120/80 nine times out of ten. Can
someone tell me if I'm going to die soon?
Anyway, I pass an hour twenty of my life and keep my
purchases cool. Then the shuttle comes back. I am
the last to board, and I notice that a lot more people
are getting on than originally were dropped off.
Also, my cat-like acumen detected that these people
had groceries (the clues were the 80 blue sacks
hanging off of them AND the fact that I was at Safeway
on Saturday...I'm not gifted, just observant).
I step onto the shuttle with my six bags and have all
my presuppositions confirmed in quikrete: there are
no available seats.
I stand there and admonish my compatriots with my
eyes. I glared at the guy who wore aviators for
picking up groceries (and apparently no chicks) and
his seat of toilet paper and paper towels and cereal
boxes. I turn my eyes of rebuke to the lady who walks
as fast as two turtles heading in opposite directions
with their tails tied together and her 80 gallons of
gatorade (why does she need this gatorade..."does she
have it in her?" No! She doesn't break a sweat because
she doesn't break 1 mile per hour, so why is she
getting vast amounts of electrolytes?).
And then the straw that made the camel shout out
cusswords.
A small, petite Korean lady. Very kind. I have no
doubt she is the kindest lady on earth and says "I'm
sorry" and "Thank you" and "Please" to everyone. How
many seats should a small, petite Korean lady take?
One.
Two.
Thrrrrrrree. (KRUNCH).
NO! Five.
Five seats. One for her. One for her groceries. AND
THREE for her empty cardboard boxes.
Even with no seats for me to sit on, the shuttle
driver had sense and sensibility, and a small bladder
and a lead foot. She closed the door and started
going, and I quickly motioned for one of the
passengers to move her two sacks to the ground and let
me sit down.
My fingers became numb. Why? Ask the Korean lady if
she knows. No, she wouldn't, because she had a seat
for her groceries. If you do not have a seat for your
groceries, you cannot set them on the floor, because
the shuttle driver who is training for the Baja Race
next Thursday will easily displace all your various
cans from the bag. My fingers ached. My fingers
almost fell off.
Finally, I am dropped off, only to discover in the
safety of my own kitchen, that two eggs took a hit due
to the compressed grocery commute space. Which brings
up the point of why does this still happen? We can
build titanium bikes that weigh as much as a credit
card but we cannot design a box that is structurally
sound enough to keep Humpty Dumpty intact? What
happened to all those 8th graders who got A's in the
Egg Drop competition? Why are they not getting their
MS in Packaging Sciences? Is the Egg Industry buying
them out while they are undergrads in MechE? Is it a
conspiracy to get me to switch to liquid eggs sold in
cartons?
And the whole fiasco (which took two hours all
together...two hours.) made me think about
Consumerism. Now, I'm the last bloke to ever attack
this country and the prowess of its economy, but
c'mon. Did everyone need 10 bags of groceries for the
week? Why are my grocery bills 50 dollars every week?
My family got groceries for 100 dollars a week
(although, a sidenote: I definitely ate 80% of the
food that my family of four brought home during my
high school years, and somehow when I left for college
the bill did not go down at all, but increased. Did
my parents start getting lobster for dinner and caviar
toothpaste after I left the nest?)
I think dietary changes are in order. I think I will
start getting my fruits from Rite-Aid: Black
Cherries, Green Apples, Lemon-Limes, and Oranges.
Thanks, Zima!
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