Enlightenment in Aisle Five
Terry Mickelson went to the grocery store Tuesday night to pick up a few things. He parked his Nissan and stepped onto the rain-slicked pavement. He had already locked the car when he remembered the cloth bag in the trunk. Afterwards, he closed the trunk with the nervous apprehension of someone expecting to get hit in the back of the head with a crowbar, tossed into the trunk, kidnapped by a cartel, and then murdered somewhere out in the middle of the desert to be later eaten by vultures.
But this was small town New England, and Terry had a tendency to imagine the worst in any conceivable situation. The store was a veritable mecca of fresh organic products. So fresh, in fact, that one time his daughter pointed out a snail crawling on one of the heads of lettuce.
Terry forgot to write a shopping list. On an old list in Notes, the word parmesan had been emboldened, since forgetting it constituted reasonable grounds for divorce.
At the entrance, he grabbed a rolling cart with two baskets even though he only ever used the one on top. In normal circumstances, Terry was a direct, action-oriented shopper, with a precise enter and exit strategy designed to be as fast and efficient as possible. But with the house empty and nothing to do except eat dinner, watch a movie, and go to bed, Terry browsed the aisles with a sleepy-eyed curiosity, eyeing things and slowly turning them over in his hands, even though he didn’t have the slightest idea what recipes he could make with most of this stuff.
The self-serving cereal bar consisted of plastic tubes filled with assorted grains. Terry pictured himself as a placid piece of cattle, shuffling obliviously towards either the trough or the butcher’s blade. He held the all-natural sheep’s bladder up to the dispenser’s faucet, turned the spigot, and the bladder filled with rich honey nut and oat goodness. The smell carried with it the recollection of a thousand family breakfasts, a simple nostalgia that aimed straight at his belly. Memories surfaced of sitting at the kitchen table with a large blue bowl and a gallon of milk, keeping an eye out the window for the break of day.
The video camera shows a middle-aged guy standing there in Crocs at the cereal dispenser, rocking back and forth, to where it almost looks like he’s about to levitate. He doesn’t move for a good thirty seconds or so. He’s not staring off into the distance, per se, but is zeroed in on some insignificant detail, like pointing out the dots in a painting by Seurat.
A security guard named Antoine taps at the screen when the man doesn’t move and chuckles to himself.
“Here ya go,” he gestures to his colleague, “another middle-aged pothead searching for enlightenment in aisle five.”
Looking at the mosaic of 4k high definition monitors, the security guard can’t help but create secret stories for all the clientele he watches at an isometric view, like an omniscient video game come to life. While his colleague aggressively crosses her legs and plays Candy Crush with the volume on, the security guard immerses himself in these fabricated interactions, following entire arcs of happiness and tragedy in bits and pieces, at least until they reach the checkout line. One day he’s going to take these accumulated observations and partially legible jottings and write a screenplay that will promptly never see the light of day.
Meanwhile, he spots another lost soul staring at the cheese section, dressed in silver silk pajamas.
“Hey Jen, don’t you recognize that dude?”
You can’t decide what to do. It’s a muenster dilemma. The deli assistant is looking at you with expectant eyes. Surely she sees a lot of people over the course of the day, but never anyone with more social media followers than the populations of major cities. It’s anyone’s guess if she hasn’t already surreptitiously snagged a grainy picture of you and posted it to Insta with a dozen hashtags to score a few extra likes.
And that’s cool. Play it cool. After all, you don’t wanna make a scene. This is why you almost always go shopping late, preferably in the dead of night. Never know when the paparazzi might be around.
Some white guy moseys on up next to you. For whatever reason, it feels like sharing a urinal with someone.
Absolutely no privacy anymore.
Your manager used to say you’ll get used to it, but that underlying awkwardness around others never really goes away, even if you learn how to hide it behind the lens of a camera or under the guise of a stage name. You wear the invisible badge of an introvert with pride, knowing that fame is just the illusion of recognition. No one but your momma and your cousin knows who you really are.
You tell the dude next to you to go ahead. He does a double take, that split second of certainty sewn shut with a sliver of doubt. He mumbles thank you then asks the deli assistant for half a pound of parmesan. In a moment you expect him to be like all the others, to ask for a selfie or an autograph if it’s not too much of an inconvenience. It’s maybe not too much but it certainly is more than enough when all you want is some cheese and crackers for comfort food in order to feel at home again.
Once the parmesan is safely ensconced in the man’s basket, he turns to you and says, “Nice pajamas, sir. My daughter was your biggest fan.”
Your mouth opens, unsure of the best way to reply.
The security guard readies the tip of his pen, a new page at hand. But then he spots a mushrooming mess in another monitor, prompting him to announce a cleanup crew needed in aisle nine.
