Meet Me at the Lobster Tank
I answer the phone– not daring to break eye contact with my opponent.
“Can’t talk, I’m fourteen moves deep in a game of 200 IQ psychic chess with the checkout guy at Morton Williams. Whoever loses has to bag my groceries.”
The cashier blinks. “I’ll just bag them if you really want.”
Checkmate.
There are two kinds of grocery stores. There are regular grocery stores, and then there’s this other kind almost but not entirely unique to the city that I call “linear grocery stores.”
Linear stores have a sort of predetermined route. The lanes are basically only wide enough for a single shopping cart, and although you could try to go back, you would really be inconveniencing everyone and yourself.
The two most important skills for shopping in linear grocery stores are
- Knowing what you need
- Knowing how to forget your needs just enough to indulge the right wants
You should really know that you’re coming up on the eggs, which you need. If you want to veer off the Via Appia to grab a pack of dried mango, that’s fine. But you can’t spend too much time near the lobster tank. If you spend too much time near the lobster tank, you may find yourself feeling compassion for all living things.
The grocery store is replete with such interrogations into precisely what kind of person you are. Yesterday at the deli counter an older gentleman ordered at least eight different kinds of cold salad in various quantities. I have seen him do this before, so this is presumably a weekly occurrence. His response to whatever the deli counter had to ask him about his life must then have been “I do not cook, I consume mostly mayonnaise.”
I read labels, but not for fear of any specific ingredient invading my diet. I just read them. When the packaged food asks me “would you like some poison?” I do not simply refuse. Rather, my answer is something like “which poison? How much of it? Let me think about it.”
There are a few things at the grocery store that you’ve never seen anyone get, like POM Wonderful. Bottled beverages tend to come and go, so it’s best not to get too attached. Years ago when Coca-Cola Life came out, I tried and really liked it. I remember looking at the vibey green packaging and thinking that I could totally be a Coca-Cola Life guy. But the green can was not asking me to become a Coca-Cola Life guy. Even then I was wise enough to know what the soda was actually trying to ask me:
“Can you afford to fall in love with me, knowing that one day soon I will be gone?”
And because the answer had to be no, I did not tear at the parting when Coca-Cola Life departed its mortal coil only a few short years later. Instead, it became a flicker in the fire– a strange dream of my adolescence.
POM Wonderful was founded in 2002 and is still going strong despite the fact that nobody has ever tried it. You can find it in any grocery store, waiting for someone to love it so it can finally die.
It must be so embarrassing to be like, one of those apples stacked up in a pyramid on the display. Asking without shame of anyone who passes by, anyone who will hazard even a passing glance the only question that really matters:
“Do you even want me?”