Into the Fray

A Day at the Grocery Store

I was at Stop and Shop, where you can find me, on average, four times a week. My tour around the store was proceeding as it typically does. Single-focused on my mission, I wear my mask over my nose and mouth and scrupulously follow the directional arrows while inwardly seething at the idiots with their nostrils resting atop their masks entering where they should be exiting while jabbering away on their phones.

I was, as my former therapist liked to say, stuffing down my feelings. (Fun fact about my therapist; I didn’t quit her, she graduated me when we realized our time together felt more like a coffee date than a therapy session). For me, stuffing down feelings has always backfired, because they invariably bubble up at the wrong time and are directed at the wrong person- i.e., my husband.

Anyway, I pulled my cart up in front of an actual human cashier. Usually I go to the self-checkout, but I had beer, so I needed to present my ID, despite the fact that it sits in my wallet right next to my Medicare card. I had only one reusable bag, which refused to stay open. The cashier was on fire, pushing everything, a six-pack of beer, hamburger buns, bananas, an English cucumber, a package of ground beef, stainless steel cleaner, down the belt to the bagging area. I couldn’t keep up. I was trying to put my license and credit card back in my wallet, type in my phone number on the keypad to access my store rewards card, all while stuffing down my rising anxiety. Then, the cashier began ringing up the customer behind me. I threw the buns in the bag and set the bananas on top of them, then, the beer. I could feel the stuffed feelings building like a July thunderstorm at the back of my throat.

I was walking out of the store with my bag of crushed buns and bruised bananas when the guy in back of me decided to pick up the pace. Apparently going the rate of a normal human walking briskly wasn’t fast enough for this asshole. I sped up, stuffed feelings perilously close to a primal scream, which is precisely what I let loose a few minutes later, from the comfort and privacy of my car.

It’s all gotten to be too much. Rule-followers, rule-breakers, the masks that affect both your ability to see and your ability to breathe. That feeling that you get when you walk through the automatic doors, that you’re about to throw down the gauntlet in exchange for $64.00 worth of groceries. I was still a wreck when I got home. Putting away my battered haul, I told myself nothing, absolutely nothing, could justify this amount of stress.

Then, I remembered the beer.