Milk and honey

by tess

Gretchen and I don't shop together. And it's not just the 1,000 miles that currently separate us. No. It started long ago and far away.

I arrived at work wearing my old blue shirt, the one I had pledged never to wear again.
G: (glaring at the frayed, stained shmata I called work-wear) I thought you were going shopping this weekend.
T: I did.
G: And?
T: It's a bad story.
G: (with a this-is-gonna-be-good grin) Oohhhh?
T: Okay, so I went to Bon Ton and I was looking at the shirts and this total beeeeyotch came over with this face like hello-you're-too-fat-we-have-nothing-for-you and asked if I needed HELP WITH A SIZE.
G: (now grimacing) And?
T: And I told her that yes, I did need help with a size. I needed to know where they kept the XLs that were meant for HUMANS NOT FOR FREAKIN' BARBIE DOLLS.
Gretchen closed her eyes, humiliated to be associated with me in any way, and walked to the other end of the conference table, pretending that she'd never met me.

And so it was that I thought of her this morning at the grocery store. I turned the corner from Produce and headed toward the Fish counter. I could hear them before I saw them. It sounded like strip-canasta night at an AARP convention. I looked up and there had to be at least 50 graysters standing there chattering away. And as much as I don't like people, that wasn't the problem. It was the clusterf*ck of shopping carts behind them. It was a veritable Cart Party. Carts Gone Wild! Here, there, everywhere, willy-nilly, and piggly-wiggly. Carts, carts, everywhere freakin' carts.

And standing between Produce and the Cart Convention, stood 20 more boomers, their own carts replete with prunes, matzoh, and Efferdent, seeking a path past Meat toward Dairy but unsure how to get there.

Suddenly I heard a voice, strangely like my own, grinding out: "Are You Freakin' Kidding Me. Jeeeeeeezus Keeeeriiist." And then a woman, who looked shocking like me, started ramming carts out of the way, claring a path for myself and the scores of oldsters who had been standing there waiting for the Congregation o' Carts to disperse.

I didn't bother to glare at the shocked faces of the snarling Seafood squawkers. I had embodied my inner Moses, dammit, and I was leading my parade of blue-hairs across the Red Sea of Cart Anarchy and into the Promised Land of Dairy.