Monday, September 16, 2002

So once again I was off to buy food; don’t know what it is, can’t seem to help it. Even took money from the coffee budget and spent it on food. I think I have a problem, but it’s okay, I can handle it, it’s okay.

So there I was, lined up at Sunrise Market with my yellow tomatoes and red cabbage and orange peppers, all the signs of someone deep into a food dependancy. I can’t help it, but it’s okay.

I’ve never been there when they weren’t closing down; I think just as soon as somebody with a dolly hauls a flat of cauliflower in the front door and stacks it against the banana display another, more stealthy-like guy sneaks a box of summer squash back out the side door and around front again, so the packing up process can go on forever. It’s like grocery shopping in the movie Brazil, only they didn’t shop for groceries right there in the movie, so it’s more like their shopping would have been like, had they visibly shopped, but they all looked suspiciously well-nourished, so they probably snuck it in when we weren’t watching. I think they do the closing ritual to encourage everybody to leave, and if you had some of their customers you’d be tempted to do the same. I enjoyed working with the public because it gave me so many opportunities to meet people to whom I was superior, not an opportunity I pass up lightly; ah, the good old days. Anyway, there I was, lining up, and there they were, closing.

Closing has a way of encouraging people to get the hell into the lineup and out of the store, and the lineup was considerable. Kind of like the receipts here, the lineups go Chinese, Chinese, English, Chinese, English, and so on, but usually there’s no Produce in there, except such as belongs to the English and Chinese; it doesn’t just get in the lineup by itself the way it gets in the till receipts. Sometimes there’s produce in the till receipts that isn’t in the shopping, which is awkward and why you have to watch like a hawk when they ring things in. But the lineup: in the case of this particular lineup it went Chinese, Chinese, Native, English, Chinese, Chinese. Native was right in front of me, so guess which I was. He had a face like the surface of the moon, with the craters that come with crack and speed and a nose squashed flat so the nostrils were facing straight out. He looked about twenty, which is to say he looked about fifty without the drugs. He also had a bunch of bright green broccoli in his hand, and a shopping bag in his other hand; I figured he had just forgotten the broccoli and come back in to get it.

I thought so right up until I saw him edging up to the nearby displays and looking around to make sure he wasn’t being watched; he was, and he sidled back into the line. And then back out, over to the stacks of pickled cherries and hot Russian mustard and Horlicks crackers. And look around again, and sidle back into line. Then he gave one last, desperately nonchalant 360, bent down and pretended to fiddle with his shoe while his right hand grabbed a pack of Horlicks crackers and began to stuff them up his pants leg. His pants, however, were too tight. The crackers wouldn’t fit. He began working them back and forth, crumbling off the edges so he would have a nice pack of crumbs for his trouble, but at this point he was committed. Had to see the job through. Then he got an idea and began stuffing them in his sock, and for a few seconds I’m sure it looked to him like he was going to make it,

But for me.

When he bent over to stuff his pants full of imported malty snack crackers, the unintended sideffect was to thrust his own crack into the air and into my range of vision, courtesy of the lowriders he sported. Lovely. If there’s one thing that completely makes my day it is being treated to a 3-D closeup of unwashed, pasty, sagging and corrugated crackhead ass. Like a day without sunshine, I tell you.

So as he was shoplifting the tastiest treats that had ever seen the inside of his pants, I said, loud enough to be heard through most of the front of the store and all three lineups:

Hey, you moron! Don’t stuff those in your pants, or your sock either. Jesus, don’t do that. Hey, get those out of your pants!

He didn’t seem to be paying attention to me, still working away at the poor crackers, so being the shrinking violet I am I reached over and began to tug on his belt loops. The drawbacks of this immediately manifested themselves, as his jeans slipped even lower, but mercifully the impending sartorial apocalypse was averted when he immediately stood up, glaring.

Who you calling a moron? He sounded confused. He looked amazed when he realized how much shorter than him I was. I cleared up his confusion right away.

I’m calling you a moron, moron. You don’t do that right in front of people. Don’t steal. Duh

Wow, the eloquence even now moves me to tears; I’m sure he found it life-changing. At least he threw the poor, brutalized crackers back on the pile, paid for his broccoli in a big hurry and left so quickly he might have slipped through a crack in the floor.

When they came to me both the cashier and the bagger were laughing so hard they could hardly see. They didn’t overcharge me this time and they packed my bags very nicely, not too heavy at all, so I feel very special. But they left the crackers on the pile for sale.