I've said it before; I'll say it again: I am flypaper for freaks.
My son complains that there is never any food to eat in the
house. This puzzles me since I spend
hundreds of dollars at the store, don't eat a whole lot myself, yet the food I
purchase disappears. Someone seems to be
eating the food; I know it's not me. I'm
not really sure who should be accepting blame for the fact that "there is
never any food to eat in the house."
I think maybe we have hungry ghosts or voracious mice. For son's sake, though, I head to the grocery
store yet again to restock this non-existent food supply.
When I go to the grocery store, I always park in the same
general area -- away from the main entrance, but close to the building. I would rather walk across the front of the
lot than venture to the back of the lot.
(Strangely enough this ritual is reversed for department store shopping,
where I park directly in line with the entrance but far out into the lot. For the mall, I always park by an anchor
store, avoiding the central entrance parking spot tag-like shit show.) I have two grocery stores where I shop: one
for emergencies only (high prices, minimal selection) and one for regular
shopping.
I am at the regular shopping place today, so I pull way off
to the side into one of the spaces about fifteen rows back. I do the usual pull-through as I hate backing
out of spaces; when I'm ready to leave a place, I want to rock and roll without
having to look back. To quote Gumball Rally, "What's behind me is
not important." Unfortunately,
what's in front of me isn't important, either.
Directly across the parking lot lane is a man of about seventy with hair
the same length as mine (between collar and shoulder), except his is glossy
with oil and quite gray. He is standing
beside his vehicle, staring at himself in the side window, and he is combing
his hair with one hand and forming it into some kind of Elvis quaff with his
other hand. Combing, combing,
combing. Big date combing. Primping, primping, primping. Big date primping. He is dressed like a Goodwill Lumberjack, but
not a hair is out of place.
I lose sight of Goodwill Lumberjack man when I enter the
store. Good sense and logic should clue
me in that this will not be the only nor the culminating weirdo encounter. I am in the health and beauty aids aisle,
minding my own damn business near the sanitary products, when I hear a male voice.
"Kind of expensive, huh?"
I jerk my head up.
There doesn't appear to be anyone near me, so obviously thus
conversation starter is not for me, right?
Right?! Then I hear the voice
again, closer still, sneaking up behind me while I am pricing out Tampax Original
versus Tampax Pearl, like at my age it makes some kind of freaking difference.
"That stuff is expensive. Takes all our money, huh?"
I suddenly realize that the voice is speaking to me. I mean, he must be because he and I are alone
in front of the entire Kotex display. I
see the man has maybe four teeth on the top and maybe three on the bottom. His glasses are as thick as the bottom of old
soda bottles. He is wearing a baseball
cap with something written on it that has since faded with age and weather and
wear. His coat is the zip-out liner of
an old snorkel-style winter parka, and the silver insulated shoulders are torn
to shreds. The man has a queasy aroma
surrounding him; as a matter of fact, he smells of urine and armpits.
Fucking great. The
damn wino wants to chat with me about the finer price-comparison of female
sanitary products. You have to be
fucking kidding me. I am flypaper for
freaks. They attach themselves to me.
I smile and say, "Yuh," or something that remotely
sounds like that. As he passes by, the
stench just about knocks me off of my feet.
I wait until he continues around the corner and start swatting at the
air in front of me. I am desperate for a
breath of fresh air. I can still smell
the man one aisle over, the aroma wafting through the air like a shitty diaper that
has been percolating in an enclosed car on a plus-one-hundred degree day. Yes, yes, yes, I am mean-spirited and
judgmental, and for that I am sorry. But
for the love of Earl, I am in a grocery store and now I feel like I might lose
it and hurl. Not really conducive to me
spending more money (or any money) on food today.
Now I start to feel like an asshole because I thought those
awful things about Goodwill Lumberjack before this random stinky store stalker
guy. Part of me, anyway. The other part of me starts muttering away:
"Why the fuck do
these people always talk to ME?! What is
it? Do I have a sign on me that says
'Please talk to me, especially if you smell like urine'? Really.
Seriously. Who approaches random
people and strikes up a conversation in the store? Who the hell wants to talk
to me while I'm shopping?! Shit. I DO. I want to talk to me while I'm shopping
because I am talking to myself. Out
loud. I am unfit to be in the aisles of
Market Basket. I am unfit to be out in
public."
Oh. My. God. I
am talking to myself in Market Basket. Apparently
I am not the fly paper; I AM THE FREAK.
I finally make my way to the check-out line where I am
behind a woman with as full a carriage of stuff as I have. Suddenly a young woman appears with about six
things in her arms. I assume that she is
expecting me to say, "Oh, you go ahead of me, sweetie. You only have a few items." But I don't say that. I don't even bother making eye contact. There's a goddamn EXPRESS LANE a couple of
registers over, and it's not even backed up at this hour of the morning. It takes every once of fiber for me not to
smack her across the face and point her toward the far end of the row where the
express checkouts are.
When I get out to my car and start loading the bags inside,
I realize the moron at the register packed my bread in with the two half-gallons of
milk I bought. I mean, of course she
did. Of.
Course.
Life should not be this hard. Shopping should not be this much work, and
this is precisely why I avoid the activity like it's the damn Black
Plague. Sometimes I'm the freak, and
sometimes I'm the fly paper. Either way,
there are thirty-eight days until my kid goes back to college and I can go back
to ignoring the grocery store. It's
probably safer for everyone that way.
