The Privileged Shopper of Beforetimes
I flash my card for a friendly nod, and immediately notice a mother and daughter staring at a stack of boxes near the entrance.
“This is such a good price,” the Burberry-scarfed mother remarks, “for this amount of hyaluronic acid…we’ll get a couple.” Her early-teen daughter agrees. Or she doesn’t. You can’t really tell with them, can you? She stares blankly. Or stares in contempt. Maybe she’s hungry. You can’t tell.
I quickly walk past them, but encounter another curiosity. “May I ask who your cable provi–”
“I already have DirecTV,” I say, as I flash what I think is a smile, but really just looks like some sort of grimace. The type of grimace that Grimace had, before they changed his grimace to a smile. Before blue-shirt guy can reply, I’m already past the iPads, the laptops, and the diamond drop earrings. I hear a piano playing. There’s an electric piano on the endcap. Is the piano playing by itself? That’s cool…no, wait. As I walk closer, I see a small Asian girl playing. She’s pretty good. She also looks like she’s 5 years old. Maybe she’s older, and just small? Where are her parents? I remember playing piano. I started taking lessons when I was 7. And then finally stopped when I was 15. Maybe 14. Why didn’t I take piano lessons as seriously as I would have if I took lessons now? Because I was dumb, and my brain wasn’t as fully-developed as it is now. Or maybe I just didn’t feel a connection playing Dvorak’s “Humoresque.” Remind me to kick myself later.
Seafood Roadshow is happening, I can see the acrylic-walled displays of previously frozen King Crab legs on ice in the distance. I’m not walking that way. Take a left, and cut through the seasonal goods (which at this time of year are inflatable rafts and pool toys, despite the outside temperature being 43º F), head to the other main aisle. That’s where the riches start. Pretzel thins, baked veggie straws, and little cups of salsa with one tortilla chip. Little cups of trail mix. Gummi vitamins. Clementine wedge. A two-inch section of Fruit By The Foot. Turkey breakfast sausage link. Yes, I will try some Annie’s Mac & Cheese, thank you for asking. These hashbrown potatoes come dried, in little cartons? “Six cartons in a package!” Huh. I think that’s actually how the hashbrowns at Waffle House come, before they rehydrate them, and then scatter, smother, and cover them.
I walk towards the back. Do I want a sample of Go-gurt? It’s too sweet. Let’s see what’s in the back of the freezer aisle. That’s where you’ll find hidden gems, such as the veggie burger patty; the sample is literally a quarter of a whole patty. Is it good? No, it is not. But it is a quarter of a whole patty. The next aisle over, people are lined up, waiting for the steamed chicken potstickers to come out of the microwave. “Please be careful, the contents are very hot! You get four trays of six in each box. Thank you for trying!” No, thank you, hairnet-wearing person. I scurry off with my paper cup containing half of a mouth-burning potsticker, and eat it over by the dishwasher detergent pods. One time in college, I watched a squirrel sit on a garbage can, and eat a half-eaten bagel, with a look that said, “Don’t judge me! Mind your own business.” I feel like that squirrel. Well, I’m not going to stand there and eat, in front of the sample cart, like these old people here. The person giving out the sample does not need to see your reaction as you pop it in your mouth…and immediately spit it out. She told you the contents were hot, Grandpa.
Prepared Foods is always a good place to stroll. I stare longingly at the trays of croissant cold-cut sandwiches next to trays of pinwheel wraps next to trays of cocktail shrimp. So many shrimp. Will I ever know enough people, or have enough friends, to warrant this amount of shrimp? And do they include enough cocktail sauce for that amount of shrimp? I don’t think they do. Why do we only relegate the use of cocktail sauce for seafood? No, not even seafood (plural) but seafood (singular): shrimp, and only shrimp. Cocktail sauce deserves better. As a first cousin to ketchup, it should really be higher up in the hierarchy of condiments. But instead, the world treats it like Charlie Murphy: he was very funny, but people only saw him when he was with Chappelle. And younger brother Eddie always got the attention. We can all agree, though, that Charlie Murphy had something special, something extra that Eddie didn’t have. I think it was horseradish.
I always eye that bake-at-home chicken pot pie, because it looks like it’s eighteen inches in diameter. A pot pie the size of a large pizza, made with the scraps of unsold rotisserie chickens. This is the privileged world we live in, where we pay a yearly fee to get access to a $5 rotisserie chicken. I’m fond of the rotisserie chicken, of any rotisserie chicken, really. Back in the days of me not practicing piano, my dad would often stop at the local Convenient Food Mart (that’s not a description, that was the actual name of the store, Convenient Food Mart), and pick up a WondeRoast™ chicken for dinner. It was the early ancestor to the Costco rotisserie chicken. You could grab them out of the rotisserie oven/glass display case: the chickens cooked on the rotisserie at the the top, already-cooked chickens were on the bottom, each cooked chicken placed in a foil bag. A chicken, some lotto tickets, a pack of True Blues, and maybe a 2-liter of Diet Coke. That’s what convenience stores were for.
This…this is not a convenience store. No one comes here because it’s convenient. First, you have to pay a fee just to walk through the door. Second, there is nothing in this place that is “grab and go.” “But I can get a 1/4 pound hot dog and a drink for $1.50!”, I hear you say. This is true, and that’s a pretty good deal, but have you seen the line to get that? Have you seen the line for the ketchup and mustard dispensers? Have you seen the guy who’s hogging the Pepsi machine, filling his cup with Diet Pepsi, sipping the foam, filling it again, sipping the foam, filling it again, sipping…then dumping it out to get Mountain Dew? Everything in this place is meant for someone who has abundent closet and pantry space, and owns, at minimum, a 2012 Hyundai Santa Fe. That’s on the application you fill out when you want to join. “Must have access to a 2012 or newer Hyundai Santa Fe or equivalent Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV) that can adequately house a 36 roll pack of toilet paper.” It’s all right there, in black and white, right next to the checkbox that asks if you will “accept Kirkland as your lord and savior.”
Convenient places are on the way home. It’s never on the way home. In fact, you’ll probably have to drive twenty minutes from home to get there, unless you live in a strip mall, or in one of the new “lifestyle luxury apartments with amenities such as our decorated-like-a-millenial-centric-log-cabin-esque clubhouse.” You can’t run in, grab something, and run out. In order to even leave, you have to wait in line, for someone to make sure you’re not stealing that 10 pound bag of golden flaxseed (no need for refrigeration, it’s the good stuff). And those times when you think you’re home free, that you got what you came to get, and are getting the hell out of there, something stops you: endcaps. The home of all the things you never thought of buying. You know you really don’t need 32 ounces of pecan halves, but how can you pass that up? You could always vacuum-pack the nuts, and freeze them. FoodSavers are in aisle 4. And if you’re getting one of those, you really have no excuse not to get that 10-pack of New York strips. “That’s such a good price,” a woman next to you remarks, as her daughter stares blankly.
