I love Saturday morning grocery runs to the “Fancy Kroger.”
It’s only November, but the front entrance, normally a no-man’s-land of discount endcaps hawking industrial-sized bags of off-brand tortilla chips or serving as a hospice ward for over-frosted cookies on their last sellable breaths, is now overflowing with well-preserved Hamco trophy wives. They’re dressed to the nines, sipping Starbucks, and cackling in coordinated harmony while their minivans purr contentedly in the parking lot, remotely started a good half-hour ago, most likely while they were still in the checkout line watching smaller people from a less-fortunate part of town bag their gluten-free, mostly organic haul.
Into this Prufrock nightmare I stride, a lone knight in sensible comfort-wear, bearing a humble weekend’s bounty of coffee, meat, and a six-pack of vaguely Island-themed beer. I pretend to pay the aged “woo-girls” no mind as I march stoically into the frozen wasteland (a brisk 23 degrees, sunny, no wind, 1/2-inch of snow on the ground) where I start my car the old-fashioned way, with a key, like some sort of caveman.
They may see me as Neanderthal, but I am human, and I, too, crave love.
