Ya Know What I was Thinking?

Shopping With the Walking Dead

I hate going to the grocery store. For that matter, I really don't like being around people, but the grocery store is the worst. I know, I know, this is the same complaint about 2 billion other people have; but it's my blog and I'll cry if I want to! From the parking lot, to the surrogate shoppers, down through to the oblivious zombies, enduring a grocery shopping trip is the veryest of bitch-kitties for me!

The adventure begins as soon as I arrive. Where will I park? Shit, will I even get to park, or am I going to get t-boned by the guy in the beat-up old Ford who's trying to rearrange his groceries in the back seat while driving? Or will it be a head-on with the 114-year-old lady in the Cadillac who's convinced that all the lanes belong to her? Maybe it will be the kid in the Charger who somehow fails to realize that the speed limit in a parking lot is not 45 miles an hour!

Well, so far I've survived, but only by the grace of Sam Walton. (I firmly believe God is currently boycotting Walmart and has been for some time, now.) But playing Enduro and Frogger in the parking lot is only the first of my travails. Upon entering the store, it seems 90% of the customers are stripped of common sense and dignity. It's all but cliche, these days, to mention it, but behold the shoppers in the sloppy pajamas, the mindless wanderers wearing tank-tops, booty shorts, and galoshes. From the sidewalk outside to the area just beyond the lobby, the public have devolved into a new breed: Walmutants!

You've run into them, I'm sure. Literally run into them. They're the ones who love to stop right where the shelves start after the lobby, taking more time to arrange their purse in the cart than it took the glaciers to make the great lakes! You'll encounter one of the same ones later on, her cart parked diagonally in the middle of the aisle as she peruses every ingredient in every can of soup. She's the one who will glare at you witheringly when you say, "Excuse me, ma'am." She's the one you want to follow to her car so you can slash her tires.

You've met her sister, too. And her brother, and her mom. Her 3 second-cousins, each removed one, two, or three times. Hell, probably even her foster step uncle-in-law! They're the ones having a family reunion in the main aisle, the whole group clustered together like a blood clot threatening to give everyone else trying navigate the store a severe stroke. (Bet your left eye is twitching right now just thinking about them; mine is!) Of course, they break up eventually, but only to lumber through the store aimlessly, leaning on their empty carts, selecting nothing from the shelves, only causing grocery cart traffic jams worse than LA freeways at rush hour.

Sometimes, I can dodge around one of these cretins (although not without the aforementioned glare, as if actually filling my cart with things to buy is heresy). Usually, however, it is only to run smack into a giant blue cart full of bins for 28 other people's online shopping loads. There's at least three of these rolling roadblocks in every aisle. I don't have to worry about glares, though; these marionette marketeers don't even look at me when I ask them if they can move their portable semi out of the way. They simply continue grabbing and slamming items into the bins, grab and slam, grab and slam.

Finally, after spending at least half of my weekend at Walmart for one shopping trip to buy 2 liters of Pepsi, a block of Swiss cheese, and a jar of miniature sweet gherkins, I wend my way to the checkout where I wait in line for 20 minutes waiting for someone in front of me to rediscover how a barcode scanner works. But when I finally do make to the checkout, I wonder if I'm the one who has forgotten how it works: How can I owe $23.88 for this?!

Frazzled, exhausted, and mere moments away from assault with a salty condiment, I limp out to the sizzling pan of a parking lot, fighting the glare of a sun I feel like I haven't seen in weeks to find my car. ten minutes of Defensive Driving 301, and I'm back on the main road among (relatively) saner drivers. And finally, finally, taking a breath of relief, I finally arrive back home, taking my groceries inside the cool quiet house.

I put away my pickles, set the soda aside, slide the cheese in the crisper, and place the milk—

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU......!!!!!

I forgot the milk, which was really the only reason I went to that madhouse in the first place!!!

Oh well, ladies and gentlemen. I ain't going back; my blood pressure cannot handle it. I've got what I got, and it'll have to work.

Who knows? Maybe in a future blog post, I'll tell you what Fruity Pebbles taste like in room-temperature Pepsi rather than some wonderful ice-cold milk.