Gosh today I had a great, genius, future-famous-artist sort of thought. Well, no. But great. Saw a girl in the aisle with all the sauces and drinks, I was looking for the soy and wouldn’t find it for another twenty minutes. Attractive, yes, but this isn’t that kind of story. Besides, she was wearing all black and looking at the red wine. She looked at the rows with that face you might make if you thought you could pull off such a face. She read the bottles as if she knew each taste, and she only needed to decide which swank bottle was perfect for tonight. Please.
And there, after talking to nary a soul all day, the thought hit me. Why is everyone so serious all the time? Blame me too, but really, why do girls have to stand like that, all contrapposto, fist to the hip with her little cart neatly parked as she secretly looks for that one bottle she’s had a dozen times before with her “flatmates.” Arbor Mist’s over here honey. And it’s not just a girl thing, it’s a people thing. A guy standing in the meat aisle eyes the butcher and slowly taps two fingers to his sober lips, as if he even knows the difference between flank and sirloin. Really.
Now people are serious like this everywhere. Gas station, bank, stop light. There’s good reason, we’re all just trying to get through the day, to get home or whatever. But such seriousness, such drab mechanics, this passive meanness we all employ in the grocery store is a real sad thing. Why? I’ll tell you why. For some crazy reason, possibly to do with the fact that today, my air-conditioner hates me, I lost to myself in five games of pool, and I really hadn’t had enough fun, I wanted to do something special to that girl standing by me in the saucy aisle. I wanted to pick up that pound of steak already in my cart, unwrap it from its white paper, all bloody sticky red, and throw it at her. Just to hear that sound. Hopefully it would hit her in the face and then tumble down her black blouse, her rolled dark jeans, and her sandaled little feet. Then maybe I’d say something silly like “meat!” or “beef you woman!” Then I’d run off round the corner, just praying she’d be nipping at my heels with the mustard.
Folks the grocery store is full of food that isn’t ours, and we each only have one store we call our own. That leaves, like, thousands of stores to play in. There’s no excuse for our timid ways. Let’s, as a nation, stop beating our wives, stop shouting on the phone, and for God’s sake, stop calling one another those words we really don’t mean. We can each take it out on perfect strangers, and they’ll be raring to give it right back. There is a surplus of safe, colorful weapons waiting for us, and most of us are overweight. Let’s buy less. Let’s eat less. Let’s get kicked out.