When my mother was 7 months pregnant with me she had a panic attack in the grocery store, had to leave and would not return to a grocery store for 10 years. I picture her walking up and down the aisles, trying to choke down this unsettling feeling and then finally in aisle 3, staring at Tony the Tiger on a box of cornflakes, she starts to back away from her half-filled cart slowly. She then turns around and bolts for the door, knocking down the eery life-sized underwear advertisement featuring the Fruit of the Looms guys.
The first time I caught wind of this story, it made perfect sense to me. It wasn’t her running from the store that night: it was me.
From the womb I knew those lights, that music, those rapid changes in temperature were wrong, all wrong and I needed out of there and hers were the only legs that could make that happen. Unlike my mother, I have yet to regain my ability to grocery shop with anything but a sort of steadfast anxiety.
Seeing as the grocery store is one of those “have to” places we all must eventually go, a bit like death really, I have had to come up with creative ways to endure this aspect of living. I always shop at the same store at the same lightly peopled time, taking the exact same route from produce section, past the meat counter, through dairy, down the bulk food, up through frozen food and straight into check-out lane 5. Every time. The pattern never changes. An entire weeks worth of groceries procured in less than 15 minutes from the time I walk in the door until the time I walk out. Whew. If I have something specific that I need to get, say ingredients for a dinner with friends, I will make a list and write it in the same order I plan on walking through the store, visualizing my path as I approach the door. It gets terribly daunting and emotionally overwhelming when they, gasp, move something in the store and no meal can’t do without an ingredient or substitute if the store doesn’t carry it. There is no time to “look,” or heaven forbid “shop,” just simply go without.
Highly efficient, extremely neurotic.
This was the case until I discovered the fish guy. Admittedly it took me awhile, perhaps close to a year, before I picked my head up to even see life happening around me, let alone notice the fish guy. Now, I walk in the store, make my first left, grab a basket and look straight at him before heading for stop #2 (the mushrooms, first stop in produce). Then as I’m heading to stop #5 (eggs), I watch whatever scene is playing out, moving slowly, maybe read the ingredients on a bottle of salad dressing to feign interest, while listening to the conversation happening in front of me before I move on.
The fish guy is actually 3 different guys, but they all kind of look the same and there is always some starry eyed, cute, ultra-fit, mountain-town girl asking about the salmon or something. She starts the conversation out rather innocently and then launches into various flirtations. I’ve heard the fish guy discussing his “other” life outside of fish with the cute girl, although I can’t figure out what that is exactly, I imagine its artsy– glass blowing, metal work, something like that. The cute girl always looks absolutely captivated. Captivated. Every word uttered. Every rote philosophical concept explored. Captivated.
I’ve now begun my circuit by picking up the basket looking to see which fish guy is there and then look to other side of the counter to find her: the cute girl. Sometimes she hasn’t quite built up the courage to engage in aimless chatter, so you see her loitering at the salad bar, looking over her shoulder strategizing. The conversations are pretty dull and at times cringe-worthy, but its the unspoken communications– the flinging of hair, the uninterested questions about cuts of halibut in an attempt to gain eye contact– that are especially good, entertaining even.
It’s such welcome and fabulous distraction from not wanting to be in that horrid building for any more than the few minutes I have to be.