“Going down the Amazon?” a complete stranger commenting on
one of my more spectacular hauls of groceries from our local mega-mart. It
wasn’t a real question.
Nothing invites intrusive, judgmental comments like a
shopping cart full of groceries. It’s public. It’s visible. It’s like a neon
sign on malfunctioning wheels for letting the neighbors know that someone at
your house has a bladder control problem or various kinds of itches.
Perfect strangers think nothing of peering into a private,
personal shopping cart and remarking on a load of fire ant killer and lemonade
and saying, “Someone’s got a lot of work to do.”
“Or, I’m planning to kill my husband,” I responded. The
conversation waned at that point.
Buying machetes present their own special challenge.
Over the years, I’ve developed strategies for trying to keep
my personal grocery buying habits private and, let’s not forget, personal.
When buying large quantities of anything that you’d rather
not have comments on, oh say like—lice shampoo—first, place a snazzy little
storage ottoman (aisle eleven, next to the candle aisle, $19.99) in your
shopping cart and remove the lid. Then, dart down the shampoo aisle, scraping
bottles of lice shampoo into the open ottoman. Replace ottoman lid. Continue
shopping.
The down side is that you have to buy a lot of storage
ottomans for twenty bucks a pop. The up side is that you’ll have a ton of
handy, functional storage ottomans all over the house, and you’ll be able to
treat the lice epidemic without public outcry or verbal flogging.
Recently, I wrestled my way out of our local mega-mart
behind a heap of groceries hidden inside storage ottomans. The heap was large
enough to supply an expedition going down the Amazon. I am a smallish person. I
tend to procrastinate shopping. Therefore, when I say “heap of groceries” I
mean a leaning tower of milk, bread, eggs, ant killer, and machetes.
Apparently, I resemble a fire ant carrying a shopping cart.
Folks find the sight amusing. They often comment.
A gallon of milk rolled out from under the cart across the
floor.
“Hey, lady, you got that shopping cart under control?” A
young man said. He was standing near the icemaker admiring his big arm muscles.
I blew a strand of hair out of my sweaty, straining face and
said, “We’d better hope so, or we are all dead men.” I kept pushing, wishing I
knew how to make my own printer ink, paper, crab salad, and machetes at home.
“Besides,” I muttered under my breath, “it’s not a shopping
cart in the South; it’s a buggy. It’s a buggy.”
Comment on that.
Linda (Shop Much?) Zern
