Personal blog of christian
writer & fallible mom
Katy McKenna Raymond
in Kansas City, Missouri
Katy is represented by
Rachelle Gardner at
WordServe Literary
Read more Katy at
LateBoomer.net
Recent Posts
- Soul Train
- Live Out Your Dream And Discard The Box
- Tears In A Bottle
- From The Young Mom I Once Was, To You
- I Can’t Help Falling
- What A Difference Ten Years Makes
- The Next Best Thing To Robert Redford
- The Memory Keeper’s Daughter
- Where Have All The Years Gone
- Fun With Kiki Cullen
- Stuck On Mom
- Ten Years Later, Our Girls From Northern Ireland Remembered
- The Thrift of Grief
- Job Security
- The Party’s Over
Syndicate
E me at katy @ ngenius.com
My Idea Of Outragious Fun, Except For The Hungry Masses Yearning For Their Next Meal Part
I had to get in the grocery line behind the girl with the cornrows, I just had to. If you’d been there, you would have done it, too.
I knew it would take 11.3 minutes longer in that line than any other, but for once, I didn’t care.
We first encountered each other in the health food section, which in HyVee Stores is really rather nice. Lots of bulk nuts and grains and spices, plus organically grown this and that, and some sugar-free items that never fail to call my name.
She was young, maybe 25, and looked at first to me to be the funky student type. Her plaid wool skirt hit her just above the knee, and although she had a cute figure, the thick knit leggings with the baggy knees did not do her justice. The leggings ended at the ankle, and beneath them she wore heavy socks of the same color—brown—and over the bunched-up socks, leather toeless sandals strapped the whole multi-fibered concept together.
Now this get-up, replete with a sweater vest and then a fleece cardigan, might have been overlookable if it had been cold outside. But the thermometer hit sixty early on, and seeing her dressed like that made me have a minor hot flash. OK, make that a major one.
Still, I surreptitiously followed her from the flax cereal to the check-out lanes, where I got a good, long chance to view the contents of her cart.
Placed in an unrelentingly methodical fashion were three piles of frozen veggies. Does “stacks” sound more precise than “piles”? I don’t know. Maybe “pillars” is the right word. Five bags of corn niblets were laid one upon another with the perimeters of the bags lining up like a perfectionist might match the edges of a folded towel. I wondered what would happen if one tiny niblet got separated from its compadres and forced its way into the corner of a bag, causing a seismic shift of such magnitude that the whole tower came off kilter, but of course, I kept my fears about such a mishap to myself.
Exactly three inches separated the stack of corn bags from the stack of five bags of broccoli. And another three inch path delineated the broccoli from the stack of five frozen bags of peas.
These fifteen items occupied the side of the cart closest to the girl, who I now remember wore no glasses although she looked (because of her costume) like the sort who would need coke-bottle lenses and even then would stumble in semi-blindness. As it was, she carried herself flawlessly erect, with the posture and composure of a classically-trained ballet dancer. The only item separating the girl from her veggies was her purse, which sat squarely in the very center of the kiddy seat, until it began squriming and begging for candy at the check-out lane. OK, I made that part up. Her purse was very well behaved, indeed.
On the far end of the cart were three see-through bags of fresh produce. One bag contained three large yellow onions, one three large green peppers, and the third three large orange oranges. Each bag had been twisted at the top, the twisted portion had been fixed beneath the bag, and they’d been placed in the cart at the exact same slant—with the little twist at a 45 degree angle, pointing directly at the clerk who was about to serve this customer.
I could not WAIT to see how the girl would empty the cart, if there would be an equally fascinating arrangement made on the counter. I smiled to myself when she reached for the top bag of corn and placed it alone near the scanner. She watched the monitor as the clerk scanned it, making sure the price rang up to her satisfaction. Then she removed the next bag of corn and repeated the procedure—watching the monitor again.
Lather, rinse, repeat. Never more than ONE item on the counter. Time passed. A very, extremely large quantity of time. The store emptied. Clerks punched time-clocks and sped out of the parking lot.
Finally, a manager walked by and said, “Here, let me help you unload your cart…” and she did not object. The bags of fresh produce, though, she handled herself. She picked up the bag of onions, unwound the twist she’d made at the bag’s opening, rewound it, tucked the twist under the bag, and laid it near the scanner at an angle replicating the angle she’d used in the cart. The broccoli and the oranges? Untwist, retwist, tuck, place, and point.
I knew, knew, knew by then that she would be paying with cash. I also knew her payment would probably be drawn from a neatly folded pile of one-dollar bills.
“What do you mean, you knew?” Doug asked me later. “Easy,” I said. “Some things you just know.” Sure enough, while the sacker placed her groceries in plastic bags, she counted out what she owed from a pristine collection of dollar bills.
I was still chuckling over all of this as I tossed my groceries carelessly onto the counter. I don’t even have the decency to keep multiple copies of the same item together, much less a system for fastidious organization of what I figure will just become a messy situation when I get home anyway. I guess I purchased fifty items, paid, threw the bags in my cart and turned to leave when I realized the girl’s cart was still there—parked right in front of mine.
But where was she? She was removing each bag from her cart, carrying it over to the station where the fellow had sacked, and inserting the bag into another bag in order to achieve the two-ply effect. Then she’d carry that one bag back to the cart, remove the next one, and so on. And so on. And so on.
“Have a nice day,” I said, as she moved her cart and I scooted past her.
“Oh, I will,” she said. “Once a week, I make lunches and deliver them to people who can’t get out.”
What a kind soul, I thought. “That’s sweet of you,” I said. “So, tomorrow’s your day?”
“No, actually, it’s today.” She smiled as she calmly double-bagged her three oranges, but I couldn’t help worry about those poor starving shut-ins.
It was already three o’clock.
ummm I really want to laugh, but as you reap what you sow, I know that tomorrow I would be stuck behind her twin brother or something. so I will only chuckle sympathetically. way to get blog fodder out of it though!
Posted by Liz on 01/13/07 at 10:23 PMWaht a pretty picture you paint with your words… I did laugh btw.
Take Care
MichaelPosted by Michael #2 on 01/15/07 at 10:13 AMLiz—How are you, lady? :) And to think I got behind this girl ON PURPOSE. I don’t regret it, either. She was more fun that back-to-back episodes of Monk, which I highly recommend.
Michael #2—Laughter is always appreciated! Now, if you could just get my little sister to start blogging again. The stinker.
Posted by Katy on 01/15/07 at 11:43 AMKaty - as always you make me laugh and look at life with a whole new perspective! I even had to call Mike in to read this one. Can’t wait to see you in September! We need to grab a coffee together!
Posted by Staci on 01/20/07 at 11:53 AM
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