Sunday morning old-guy grocery shopping
Good lord, I got to smile more when I’m out in public
There’s a snowstorm coming so I’m at the grocery store at 7:45 a.m. on a Sunday morning, buying bananas and English muffins.
Looking around, the only people in sight are men who are older than 65, seemingly wandering around aimlessly. Their carts all have one or two items, milk, and something else, usually in a can, Dinty Moore stew, Spaghettios. All these guys have on baggy pants, shuffle their feet as they walk and have untrimmed gray and brown beards.
Is this the new Sunday morning grocery store dress code?
The expressions on their faces are all the same: It’s the look of someone complaining about his water bill.
Oh there’s a woman. She’s dressed nicer, has no beard, but has the same expression, same walk. Milk. Campbell’s Chicken Noodle soup.
My mission is simple. Bananas. English muffins. But these people seem bent on stymying me. One fella is putting on a one-person blockade of the banana display. I feint, and dash, and reach around his cart to grab a bunch of five, not too yellow, not too green. Ha!
Then I get caught between two old-timers, walking side by side in the bread aisle. They are not talking. They are not glancing at each other. Could they be racing? It would be the slowed shopping cart drag race ever. One stops at the bagels. The other moves on. Now’s my chance! I grab the bag (or is it a carton?) of six Thomas’ English Muffins and bolt for the sales registers.
Luckily there is no line. These guys don’t buy much and they pay cash.
The cashier greets me with a cheery good morning. My reply is equally cheery and robust. It’s genuine, because it is a joy to see someone with a spark of life in them. She puts my items in a bag, my credit card bumps the machine and it beeps, transaction successful.
A gray day greets me outside the store, but cold air and freedom feels good.
— -
A few days later, my reflection stared at me from the bathroom mirror just before my morning shave. The face was scowling. The beard was a scraggly gray. Realization struck. Those old guys? They are me!
I got to smile more, man.
Note: Some details of this essay have been rhetorically exaggerated. But the spirit of the piece is true.
