Saturday, August 07, 2004 mylifeisalie.com
Guest starring Laura Ingalls Wilder
As many of you may know, I don't leave the apartment very often. Pretty much everything I need is here, and I am not good at leaving. Sometimes, though, it's a nice day, or I will have run out of food, and it cannot be avoided.
I took a trip to Save a Lot this afternoon, because we were out of roach spray. I would rather have that than food. (I remember once commenting on David's site about how one should deter bugs non-toxicly. I am such a total asshole.) I have thought about not buying any food for a couple weeks, and not allowing anyone to bring anything edible in the house, hoping to starve the roaches.
Save a Lot is so close by that I shop as the Europeans do, making several quick trips a week. However, as I understand it, Europeans are shopping for produce and loaves of fresh bread, which they place in string bags and carry jauntily. At Save a Lot I am shopping for food in boxes, because I've admitted to myself once again that I am a lump.
Some of the store personnel know me. There's the lady who sneers at me, the lady who only sometimes sneers at me, and the man who yells "Do you need a cart?" every time he sees me. Today, for example, I thought the coast was clear, but he popped out of the back of the store when I was looking at crap in the dollar aisle.
"Do you need a cart?" he yelled.
"No," I said, because it was true. I didn't need a cart at all.
"Are you sure? Because I can go all the way up to the front and get you a cart--"
"Oh, please, no. I couldn't ask you to do that. I don't have many things."
"Oh, right, because you don't cook, right?"
And here I began to become embarassed.
"I cook!" I said. "I cook practically all the time."
"Right, right" he said, looking at the roach spray and processed bread I was carrying. "Do you work?"
"Of course I work," I said.
"Yeah? Where do you work?" he asked. I realized, mostly that he was only being stalky-friendly, and was not condemning me for being a lump, but instead of saying, "Aw, naw. Hell naw! Who the hell do you think I am?" I told him the lie I reserve for nosy strangers and my parents.
"I work! I work out of the home. I am a writer."
"A writer!" he yelled. It was the funniest thing he had heard all day. We laughed together, he and I.
"You write songs?" he asked.
"No!" I said. "You have a good day, now."
Then I went and stood in one of the two available lines for half an hour. I chose wrong, kind of. Neither of the lines really moved, per se, but I picked the one behind the chatty couple with the cart full of crap. They were talking about how there were never any carts, and how one had to wait for an employee to go and unlock the ones stalled at the yellow line painted on the pavement, beyond which point the robot wheel covers engage and lock the wheels right up, to prevent people from taking Save a Lot carts for personal use. And I thought, "Ha! I could get a cart anytime I wanted it."
When they were still midway through getting their one million tiny items scanned, a woman opened the next register over and called for the next in line. It was me!
So I walked over there, but not before another lady darted in front of me and threw two items on the conveyor belt. Then she darted away, presumably to do the rest of her shopping. "Oh, you can go in front of me,if that's all you've got," she said when she had returned. "Ok," I said, and I went in front of her.
"Some of us have just been working all day," she said. I smiled, because it was true. Others have to work!
"I said, 'Some of us have just been at work all day,'" she repeated. "Some of us are tired, and just want to get home to our kids." I smiled at her again, because I don't even have kids! Sucker!
By that time the lady who only sometimes sneers at me was done ringing me up. As I walked away, I heard the lady behind me telling her about how I don't understand what it's like to work for a living, and that I've had everything handed to me.
She must read my blog.
P.S.: That woman was Laura Ingalls Wilder.
P.P.S.: My upstairs neighbor just brought me cookies! She handed them to me!
posted by Frenz | 8/07/2004 08:09:00 PM
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