[33 of 100] Make the Supermarket Great Again!

I like going to the supermarket late at night because I get to interact with the weird cast of characters who only come out to shop after dark. For example, last night there was a frail, middle-aged man shouldering a massive backpack almost as tall as he was and wearing a baseball cap to hide his male pattern baldness. He was gingerly carrying an armful of cup-o-noodles, the styrofoam cups piled so high he had to brace them under his chin. I opened my mouth to make a quip about his obvious love for instant noodles, but he shot me a look that said he wasn’t in a joking mood. Fine by me.

The man ended up right behind me in line, awkwardly balancing his tower of cup-o-noodles. Seeing his precarious situation, I pushed my items forward on the conveyor belt to make room for his stash. He returned the gesture with a scowl, which I thought was a strange reaction given the circumstances. Instead of unloading the cup-o-noodles onto the conveyor belt, he stacked them onto the metal portion right at the edge. Perhaps he didn’t want his perfectly dehydrated food cavorting with my soy milk and whole wheat bread. Or perhaps my body odor had fallen below acceptable standards. I discreetly sniffed myself, knowing it wasn’t unusual for me to let my personal hygiene lapse. Nope. I still smelled like Old Spice.

I guess the man just didn’t like me.

When my items were safely across the bar code scanner and into a grocery bag, the man finally put his cup-o-noodles onto the conveyor belt, dumping them in a styrofoam cascade. He then reached for a tabloid with the following headline in big bold type: CLINTON CAUGHT TRYING TO FLEE COUNTRY. He glared at Hillary’s face for a moment before opening the tabloid to the article. I couldn’t read the text, but I saw pictures of Hillary and Bill Clinton at the airport. They were the kind of unflattering photos that get taken when people are between facial expressions so it looks like they’re making a sinister face but really they’re just in the middle of a sneeze or a blink. The man scanned the article for a moment then put the tabloid onto the conveyor belt with his cup-o-noodles.

Now it made sense. It wasn’t my body odor that offended the man, but my liberal progressive nature, which I admit was oozing out of my pores. In fact, it was likely more than just that (hint: see yellow skin and slanted eyes). I imagined him going home to fill up the comments section on Breitbart or some other “news” site with angry screeds about making America great again. Step one is throwing out the illegals. Then the Muslims. Then the Asians, in particular the one he saw at the supermarket earlier that night. He’d clack away at his keyboard in the dark, face illuminated by the lonely blue glow of his computer screen. All the while, he’d be slurping down instant noodles. The ones he loved so much, even though he despised the yellow-skinned brethren of my ancestral homeland who made them possible.