Yesterday--when all my troubles seemed right in my lap.
June 8, 2006Remember when I was all depressed, that day? Boy, good thing I didn’t post to my blog, because really, who wants to read my pathetic, self-involved whining? It would be like watching a kitten with a wounded paw trying to climb some stairs. Am I right, about the kitten? Not even a cute kitten, let me add. One of those hairless types. With a bad eye.
(I just wrote “bad idea” instead of “eye,” which amused me. I like very much the image of a kitten with a bad idea. “I think I’ll mash up some Dexedrine and mix it with a Coke!” thought the kitten with the bad idea. “Kitties need uppers!”)
Yesterday I thought I was feeling better, and then I went to the supermarket. The suburban supermarket is a terrible place. I was so tired of the tiny, cramped supermarkets of Brooklyn, in which all of the aisles are designed to be exactly two inches narrower than the average stroller. Many a supermarket clerk heard the grunts and curses of a disheveled mom trying to hoist her stroller over boxes of yams and Depends in Aisle 6. And oh, I would think, how I would like a car! A car that one could load up with the many groceries, instead of hanging one’s grocery bags from one’s bodily parts and then attempting to drag one’s bag-laden self and one’s ornery child homeward!
But it turns out I was stupid to think these things, because the supermarkets here, they drive me even nutsier. First off, they’re way too big to find anything. You’re looking for some arugula and there are 57 arugula aisles, and the organic arugula is in one of them but you’ll never know which, and then you think SCREW THIS I’ll just grab some romaine hearts and the romaine hearts are 300 miles away, in the Romaine Wing (Hearts Aisle). So even if you’re going to the store for three items, it will still take you a day and a half. Pack a lunch.
And also during the day, the only other people in the supermarket are senior citizens. Not just senior citizens—ultra-seniors. The over-90 set wanders the many aisles all day long, looking for the bus back to their assisted living facility. They like to amble in front of your cart and demand that you help them located the roasted cashews.
Finally, starving and exhausted, I staggered to the cashier, who asked for my Super Value Savings Saver Plus Card, and I had to tell her I didn’t have one. She looked at me like I had just confided that all these groceries were for my satanic baby-eating feast. "I don’t understand," she said, and I said, “I—I just don’t have one“ and she said “You have to have one,” Shop-Rite must have your personal information before you can partake in the savings, which of course isn’t true, strictly speaking, but is true for these exceedingly concerned cashiers who just want you to get the savings! The sweet savings! So finally she got the special Newcomer Courtesy Card or whatever that enabled me to save 38 cents, and she let me go. But it still took me 45 minutes to get to my car because of all the old people who died on their way to the exits.
I finally got to my car, where I cried into my steering wheel, because I still couldn’t see the humor in any of it. Luckily it’s hitting me today. A little late, but it’s coming to me.
Reader Comments (113)
Of course, those super-seniors will still be in the way.
ANYway. Lurking delurking to say I hope things get better. Soon.
I know. I really, really know what you mean. The most recent day I cried my way home was driven by a quick stop off at the dry cleaners in one of those annoying Super Strip Malls that only exist in suburbia. I wandered for a moment in the mall, finding myself in an innocuous-looking department store of sorts, and happily wandered the aisles. It was when I ran smack, face-to-face into Jesus - or a large cardboard cutout of him - that I realized I was in some sort of bizarre Christian superstore, the likes of which I'd never HEARD OF, and would certainly be outlawed or laughed out of my native Boston.
I bawled the whole way home. It was all too unfamiliar and weird.
Oh Alice. I know what you mean so viscerally.
I will admit that sometimes the supermarkets put things, ordinary things, in the strangest places: why the christ does my local Albertson's stock the peanut butter in the corner-- the far corner, you know near, the restroom-- of the bakery section? It's in a jar! It should be with the other jarred items!
It will get better.
Oh, who am I kidding. Welcome to hell. ;-)
No, really, it will get better.
I move approximately every 30 days, or so it seems, and I'm always having to learn new store layouts. Even for the same chain. In fact, they just remodeled my Target here and I can't find anything. I promise, in a few weeks, you'll have the place down cold and you'll be in and out in under a full day.
stop and shop id for the younger hipper type- and they have a delivery service called Peapod that iwll deliver your groceries for an additional $5- which is completely woth it when you consider the money you will save by not buying impulse purchases or bribing Henry with the video or book on display just so you can read a label or two.
The smallest and nicest of the classic supermarkets is Kings- freshest produce, most organics, hardly ever lines, but you pay a little more.
If you want to go all the way- it's Whole Foods for you. It is paradise for an organic shopper and the smallest and friendliest by far. You will pay through the nose for anything that is prepared, but if you stick there store brands and buy simply it is one of those places that will ruin you for all the others.
Good luck, and I was serious in that email last night, you can call.
I'm leaving here and moving to the city because I hate those stupid cards. JUST GIVE ME YOUR STUPID SALE PRICE YOU ASSHOLES.
I now have 5 extra cards on my keyfob. One for my gym, one for the Y, one for the grocery store and another for the zoo. It infuriates me and yet, I'm powerless to struggle against it.
That's why I'm in therapy.
Tell me, did you drive your cart full of groceries all over the corpses? Because if you did? I just can't understand what you're so upset about in the suburbs.
You get to drive over corpses with your grocery cart. And some carts are shaped like trucks Alice.
Okay, yes, it's depressing.
I don't like all the people touching me, jostling me,walking in front me S L O W L Y and then running over my foot as they puruse the beans ever so intently.
Plus the lighting makes me want to kill myself in the produce aisle.
Needless to say, my husband does most of the shopping, bless him.
That's the answer Alice!!
OR you could go to the Trader Joe's in Westlake, where I heard a little girl say to her nanny "You know Joshua's family? They're getting a personal chef, TOO."
Or pop down the street to Gelson's, where an 8 1/2 month pregnant friend had someone in a BMW HONK at her to get out of the way as she crossed the parking lot. Yes, they did.
But I'm not bitter. I moved 6 months ago and live within walking distance of 3 badly-organized Mexican supermarkets, all of which I love. No savings cards there, just pork ears on the counter and miles of tortillas.
Just my $0.02. :-) Good luck!
I'm going to stop writing now.
So I think you're doing pretty well, considering. And it will get better, as you know (although I do understand that KNOWING and FEELING are different things).