It was the week before Thanksgiving. I was to host the family,
again as it was one of my “take care of everything” compulsions. Holiday
hosting was always followed by a hefty wave of visceral panic about all I had
to get done, but it never occurred to me not to make absurd commitments. I
worked full time, was miserably married to an unpleasable man, and had three
children. Nonetheless, I summoned the drive and strength to “git ‘er done”
including a massive grocery shopping trip.
On any ordinary day, I tend to overbuy food, afraid there
won’t be enough. Social events whip that anxiety into high gear. Plus, I wanted
to wow my mother-in-law and father-in-law, (the OG Unpleasables) thus, to
please my unpleasable husband. I was giddy, high on adrenaline being out of the
house shopping - unfettered by children, a schedule, or his rules. So, I was haphazard about how I put items into my cart. Usually, I'm not a willy-nilly type; I think ahead
and plan carefully toward the end game constrained by a need to be orderly,
but not that day. I was inebriated with cortisol while operating a grocery cart.
Inhibitions lowered; I grabbed an impulse item that was presented as soon as I entered the store. This is almost always a mistake, but
it was on my list, so with wanton recklessness, into the cart it went. The
first item crossed off; I was emboldened.
Approaching an hour later, at about two-thirds Mission
Accomplished, I realized I was going to run out of room in the cart and had yet
to choose the turkey. I did not want to drag around a second wagon. I’ve done
the double-cart-drag before and it’s no fun. It’s, well…a drag. Grocery cart wheels on their best days have their own minds. When there are two together,
they conspire to go in opposite directions, striking people and shelving as
they wobble along. Pack behavior in play, they will take out an entire display
of say…cat food cans, or Tampons. Not that I have experience with that.
I sobered up and focused on getting the star of the show, The Bird. My husband insisted on the biggest turkey possible, the behemoth of fowl, a point of macho pride. Historically, no matter how big a bird I brought home, The Unpleasable questioned that I had certainly overlooked a specimen bigger than the bird I presented. We gave no thought to the hormones, antibiotics, and hideous husbandry responsible for the gargantuan birds.
If the
size meant a week of advance thawing, so be it. There would be no room for
anything in the refrigerator other than the massive fleshy bird and a quarter jar
of congealed mayonnaise. If it meant last-minute cavity spelunking with my
hands red and frozen to excavate icy giblets, so be it. If the size meant
getting up at 2:00AM to preheat the oven and wait to put the beast in, so be
it.
In New England, we have abundant fieldstone walls. Our
forefathers were obliged to create pastures from mean rocky land. The walls
were a by-product of rock encountered while plowing. Split off from glacial ledges,
most of it is comparatively flat so good for stacked walls. Occasionally from
far north, rocks tumbled with the glaciers and then settled here. In their travels
rolling as the ice brought them, they were rounded, their corners have broken off, and their character changed. They don’t make good walls as they are too round to stay in
place. We call them turkey rocks: spherical,
cumbersome, and semi-useless. They have little utility as they don’t fit and
don’t stay put.
So, it was with the twenty-seven pounder I spied in the far
corner of the freezer bin, passed over by other shoppers as absurd. Yes. That
was my bird, a massive glacial turkey rock. Even the Unpleasable should be
impressed.
At five feet tall, I struggled to reach the back side of the
bin. Bending forward over the wall I teetered off my feet. The turkey rock
sheathed with plastic was hard to grasp but grasp I did. My hands numb and
frozen, I wrested it to the edge and with a grunt heaved it toward the cart.
The slick boulder crashed to the floor
narrowly missed my foot then hit the cart wheel and bent the axle. The wonky
wanderer was to be ever more, pulling like a hard-to-walk dog.
Panicked and adrenaline-fueled, I lifted the bird from the floor to the top edge of the cart. From there it fell with a troubling crunch onto the accumulated groceries and sundries. Thankful that I had not yet bought eggs, I reviewed my list while warming my hands in my armpits, glad I was nearing the end. Stuffing mix. Oh ya, can’t forget that.
There were so many choices I could not focus. Whole wheat?
Cornbread? Mixed bread? Sage? Traditional? Turkey rock trauma and general
fatigue muddled my decision skills. Wild mushroom and sweet onion? That’s a
flavor profile I would love, but it would never pass with The Unpleasables. I
sighed and took a safe bag of traditional white bread mix, not a decision so
much as a resignation.
I became aware of an odd noise – static or hissing.
Was it the public address system? I looked upward pensively awaiting an
announcement from on high. I was nervous. The static continued but nothing
happened. I stood still afraid to miss the announcement. I’ll admit to being
overly concerned about what would likely be a flash sale alert. But the last
time I missed an announcement in the supermarket (before cell phones) the Space
Shuttle Challenger had blown up. The second time, my husband was trying to find
me. He had almost castrated himself and was in an emergency room.
Right then, I realized the sound was not coming from the
celestial heights of the store but much lower, near the floor. And getting
quickly louder, more insistent. The hissing was issuing from under my cart! I
stooped almost standing on my head to see what it was. The source was
immediately obvious – my first purchase.
Supermarkets are Masters of Marketing, encouraging customers
to buy things they might otherwise not. Around major holidays, they create
mood-setting displays to provoke impulse buys. A baking
display included all the fixings for pies: crusts, fillings, nuts, pans, whipped
cream, and tubs of Coolwhip. It was an array to make your dental amalgams
jingle. I skipped the premade crusts and pie fillings; I always do it myself.
To not do it myself was cheating and immoral. “Do it myself” included whipped
cream from scratch, but as they predicted, on an impulse I grabbed a can of
whipped cream to save prep time. The Unpleasables would prefer it anyway and
besides, who doesn’t like creamy sweet RediWhip? It was the first item I
put into my cart.
The pressurized dream-cream-in-a-can was at the bottom. When the turkey rock meteor crashed into my cart, the cover popped off, bent the nozzle, and forced it at an angle through the steel cart grid. Under the cart, the contents were discharged into a rapidly expanding mountain of dairy delight. There is remarkably more product in those pressurized cans than one might think. I couldn’t access the can to stop it, nor the Himalayan Cream Heap. The cart like a paralyzed cow with a burst udder straddled the mess. I couldn’t move around it (remember the wonky wheel and maimed axle). Before discovering the cause of the noise, I left a meandering trail of cream along the floor, the invisible white cream on cream-colored linoleum. I didn’t dare go for help for fear that a fellow shopper might slip and fall on my cream fiasco. To leave the scene would be negligent and possibly legally actionable because I know I’m responsible for everything. I laughed to myself. Then I lost it completely and erupted into a full hysterical laughing jag. Tears rolled, and I gasped for breath unable to stop. I hiccuped.
Two customers appeared in the aisle, where I was blocking access to the stuffing mixes. They eyed me and my mess with confusion and suspicion.
I pointed to the puffy pile and gasped, “It’s whipped cream! It’s just whipped cream!”
The looks of uncertainty and full-on fear made me laugh harder. An elderly couple grabbed each other by the elbows, backed up to the shelving as far from me as they could, and crab-scurried away. A man walked by and stopped. He looked at the floor then at me.
I hiccuped. “It’s just whipped
cream. Really,” I defended.
“You should stick to the stuff in the tubs, Lady. Just stick
to the tubs.” He walked away shaking his head. I laid my head on the cart
handle and squeezed my legs trying not to pee myself. I hiccuped again.
When a manager appeared with a roll of paper towels and an
orange safety cone, I was fighting for control of my hysteria.
On the safety cone was a flailing stick figure falling
backward limbs akimbo in mid-fall. “CUIDADO!” and “PELIGRO,” cautioned the cone.
My face contorted into relapse, but I managed to squelch the fit.
“Oh, thank god!” I
exclaimed. But realizing I didn’t call for help, I asked, “How did you know?” I
pointed toward the cream mountain. She didn’t make eye contact.
“Oh, uh…a customer said there was a problem... by the stuffing,
aisle 7.”
Struggling
not to lose control again I laughed. “Oh ya! Understatement! There’s a problem alright!”
Compulsively, I apologized and then over apologized because I believe I’m
responsible for everything. I should have seen this coming with my haphazard
shopping. Who puts a refrigerated item at the beginning of a mega shop? I know
to go to dairy last; I had lost my mind.
“Oh no, it wasn’t you,” she reassured me. Turning from
swabbing the mess she looked squarely at me. “These things are really volatile.
They go off in the warehouse all the time. If you go out there you can hear
them. They call them “cream bombs.”
Yes. A bomb. As I headed to check out, the manager asked if she
could replace the can of RediWhip. I winced. “No, thanks. I’ve had enough for
today. I’ll stick to the tubs.”
Thereafter, when I needed whipped cream I used my
grandmother’s hand beater, worked up a sweat, and did it the old-fashioned way,
punishing myself with labor for my sloth and corner-cutting, reliving The Bomb.
It was years before I bought another can of Dream Cream.
Supermarket trauma #123
**
No comments:
Post a Comment