slice of life - shopping

I went out Saturday morning - feeling at least marginally recovered enough from the cold to go and do "big" shopping.

You must understand: in my life, there is "big" shopping and "little" shopping.

The "little" shopping is what I usually do - running to the local Mart of Wal for milk or salad greens or fruit or aspirins or the silly little things you need on a regular basis (or forget to buy at other times). I don't like "little" shopping because it's usually done at a time when all the freaks or self-absorbed or entitled-feeling people are out - the people who feel there is nothing wrong with blocking an entire aisle with their cart, or who will walk obliviously through the store as they converse on their handsfree phone...

(And may I remark here? The bad thing about the handsfree phones is that you no longer have one of the clues to "crazy person ahead." Back in the day, before them, if there was someone wandering through a public place, talking and waving their hands, you could assume "crazy person" and give them a wide berth. Now, nine times out of ten - at least where I live - the people talking and waving their hands have those little BORG-appliances stuck in their ears. So although they MAY be crazy people, they may also just still be someone TOTALLY absorbed in talking with a co-worker or spouse.

And I will add, I HATE the way the people doing that seem to barrel through the store, ignoring that there are other human beings in their way. I've had to step lively more than once to avoid being run down by a tank of a person who was apparently intent on directing their underling just what to do with the TPS reports at work).

Anyway. "Big shopping" is a little more pleasant for me because I can usually schedule it. And I schedule it for early Saturday morning - before the really difficult people get up and get out. Because "big shopping" involves driving about 1/2 hour to a larger city near where I live, where they have (among other things), a Target, and a Bath and Body Works, and nicer grocery stores, and a couple malls, and a Sam's Club.

I wanted to go to Sam's Club yesterday. It's kind of a joke I have a membership there - I'm a single person who lives alone. But you know? There's something deeply COMFORTING to me about being able to buy a year's supply of paper towels at one whack. It's nice to be at home on a cold winter's night and know that I've got enough t.p. and light bulbs and granola bars to last me a good long time. (I have a big closet in the guest room of my little house that is otherwise little used; that's where I keep all of the paper goods and such that I buy ahead.)

And I was getting low on some of the stuff. So to Sam's I went.

A friend of mine, raised in Britain, once said of Sam's, "It's a very American place, isn't it?" I don't think she meant that to be totally complimentary, but if you look at it, in some ways it does have some of the things I regard as good about America, and American commercial products: abundance, choice, generally good quality.

Among other things they had a very good deal on tunafish, which was the "suggested item" my congregation donate to the local food bank this month - so I bought a couple of the multican packs to take to church. I always like being able to do that, I think in some cosmic way it's making a little nod to all the blessings that I have, among them the one that I'm never hungry. (I could probably do more than I do, though).

Sam's was busy but it wasn't packed, and the people there were...well, I'd guess I'd say "reasonable" - many older couples stocking up, a couple small business people, a family or two. No Borgs, no one barrelling through the store without looking at the people around them, no knots of teenagers hanging around and pointing and laughing at the adults (and yeah, I did that as a teenager. I didn't realize how a-holish it made me look at the time).

So I got in, got my stuff, and scrammed.

The next stop was Bath and Body Works. And yeah, I know. Ivory soap costs about 1/5 of the stuff and is just as good. But I like their lavender vanilla scented stuff AND I DO THINK IT HELPS ME SLEEP after I shower with it. (And as a long term insomniac, anything that helps me sleep - or even seems to - is valuable to me). And I needed more of their stuff.

I got a bit irritated with the cashieress - she rang up the amount and said, "Wait, that's not right" (And I agreed with her, it was too much). So she pulled out a calculator and - I swear she must have retotaled my order five times, getting a different amount each time. Finally she came up with an amount which I'm not 100% sure was correct (I can never remember the tax % exactly) but I was willing to accept so I could get the H out of there - I always feel a bit out of place in that store because it mainly seems to cater - at least the one near me - to the 14-18 crowd.

The mall where the store is, in general, is pretty depressing. It's not doing well economically and you can tell. Oh, it still has a couple of the "anchor" stores left, but most of the other chains have pulled out - either closed their doors altogether or moved to a newer mall development across town - and so it's full of empty storefronts and weird one-off stores that are kind of like pale imitations of actual chains. There are a lot of discount stores, some of which that have sad piles of merchandise heaped on tables. There are also a number of stores that have oddly little stock and are manned by Middle Eastern looking people. My father once commented that he had read somewhere that Mossad sent spies to the U.S. and their "cover" was running those little kiosks in the mall. I wouldn't believe it except I do remember being accosted by a VERY talkative young woman with a strong Israeli accent (who was selling some kind of nail treatment)...so I wonder.

This mall is also the only one I've ever been in that actually has a "Dollar General" in it.

I know it's snobbish of me, but those "dollar" stores kind of depress me. When I shop, it's because I need something specific, and the few times I've tried going to one of them for the particular item (be it dental floss or bug spray or a tire gauge), it seems that that's one item they happen not to have in stock at that time. And they're always kind of badly lit, and there are weird cookies from other countries where you're not sure if the standards are quite the same as the USDA's....

There's also a cosmetology school and a "premiere unaccredited" "Christian college." (I wonder if the people who are attracted to schools like that really know what "unaccredited" means. It is not necessarily a GOOD thing).

So anyway: the mall is a depressing place - it's sort of dim and shuttered and strange and most of the people there are old people using it as a mallwalking place.

Now that I think about it, the mall makes me think a little bit what the U.S. would be like if we were a Communist country - lots of cheap, badly made stuff in poorly lit stores, lots of places that seem a little creepy and strange. (Okay, yah, in the typical "Communist" version, the Christian college would not be there, but you get what I mean)

I next went to the new shiny mall. (And I really do hope Bath and Body Works gets its act together and moves over to the new mall someday; then I'd never have to go to the sad/scary old mall). This was partly to shake off the bad-mall-feelings. I went to Pier 1 and (yes, I know, this is just SO deeply interesting to you...) I bought some candles. Smelly candles. Red smelly candles, because I wanted to do a little tiny bit of something kind of like Valentine's Day decorating, even though I really hate the holiday...it's just, it's been so gray and fairly cold and it's kind of nice to put up some bright colored things. There was almost no one in the Pier 1; the cashier was annoyingly aggressive about trying to get me to start a credit card with them. (I know, Corporate tells them to do that. But I hate it. If I wanted another credit card, I'd go ahead and apply for it without being cajoled.)

By then it was well into midmorning and I was hungry. So I did something I rarely do - I went to a fast-food place.

Now, I am not one of those "Super Size Me" anti-fast-food snobs. Truth be told? I kind of like some of the fast food options. But I realize they are not that good for me, so I don't eat them very often. But today, I just felt like I wanted to.

(In many respects, I am the opposite of a food snob. I like canned macaronis sometimes, for example. And Cup O Noodles. And Hershey bars. And I like Chef Boyardee pizza [it was the pizza I grew up eating; my town didn't have a pizzaria until I was 12 or so]. I recognize that my tastes aren't that sophisticated and I'm careful in how I choose food to be sure to get the right nutrients and not too much fat or anything, but I'm going to openly admit that I like some foods that serious "foodies" call "crap." And I don't really care.)

So I went to Chick-Fil-A. I had never eaten at one before; mainly I knew them for their cow-ads and for the fact that they closed on Sundays (which I appreciate, you know? It seems kind of nice to me that some businesspeople will take a stand and say, "I know I could make money by being open this day but it goes against my principles")

Maybe I hit the particular franchise on an unusually good day, but you know what? Chick-Fil-A is good. I got just the plain old fried sandwich and some of the fries, but the fries were really really hot and fresh and were just salty enough, and the chicken sandwich tasted more like a real chicken sandwich than most I'd had...and I got a shake, because my throat was still hurting me and a shake sounded good. And I knew that the food wasn't that good for me, but it all tasted so good - the salty salty fries and the cold chocolate shake and the nice munchy sandwich.

And you know? I was happy. Sometimes happiness is simply getting what you need at the right moment, and right then, I needed food, and I needed something cold and smooth to make my throat feel better.

So thus fortified, I made my way to Hobby Lobby. (Yet another Sunday-closing store). I like craft stores; I feel at home in them. Like bookstores, I can walk around and just feel all the possibilities - do I want to learn to make soap? What about beading? Do I need more embroidery floss? I picked up a few things, browsed a bit, paid, and went to the grocery store.

And you know? Even by then - noon, on a Saturday - the grocery store was still mostly okay? Not that crowded, not any really difficult people to have to get around or struggle with. When it's like that, grocery shopping is kind of agreeable - and again, there's something fundamentally comforting to me about it - that I can walk up and down the aisles and choose what I need, and there's enough food there, and I can afford it.

(I always think of something a minister I once knew said - he had hosted a man who was a new immigrant - I want to say he was an asylum-seeker - from the Soviet Union. And the first time the minister took the man to an American grocery store, the man started to cry, because he couldn't believe that there was so much food so readily available, and that you didn't have to wait in line for anything, and that there were multiple brands of things like breakfast cereal. I suppose that's a lesson in how even the little things we take for granted are something to be thankful for...)

So, thinking on that, I picked out the particular brand of granola I like, and the fancy special expensive milk that's bottled not very far from where I live (and it's a total extravagance, except I do think it tastes better and is fresher), and fresh fruits and vegetables (and even in my mother's childhood - not as many things were available fresh year-round as they are now), and a candy bar, and some crackers that looked good to me, and some staples I needed - and I paid for it all and went home. And I put all the stuff away and planned my week's meals based on what I had bought and felt very happy and comfortable in that I knew that I had enough food, of enough variety, and even beyond having to worry about HAVING food, I don't even have to worry about going out to GET food.

And I know - a lot of the anti-capitalists, a lot of the environmentally-minded people like to deride American commerce as being exploitative and wasteful. But I can't help but think of that Soviet man, and his tears in the grocery store, and I can't quite feel so negative about the abundance we have - abundance both in variety and in sheer quantity.