I almost got beaten up at the C-Town yesterday. I’m trying my best to convince myself that it was my fault.
The C-Town’s narrow aisles were thronged with folks stocking up for their Easter feasts. I needed a few things for some Twice-Cooked Pork I was testing out for the next meeting of my Cookbook Club. As I walked across 9th Street from my apartment, I girded myself for the obstacle course that lay ahead: people moving at all speeds and stopping for no reason in front of foods I find disgusting; precious, precious Slope Spawn given charge of the cart; and the C-Town’s insistence on stacking things in the aisles proper. I was in a good mood. I had just finished a nice walk around the neighborhood and had a great phone conversation with my sister despite her infuriating habit of not watching The Americans in a timely manner so we have something to talk about.
Uncle Leo knows the score.
I find that when the C-Town is crowded like that, all I can do is smile. I glide thru the masses, knowing exactly where everything I need is.
“Excuse me.”
“Sorry.”
“Hwooop!” [done with a kind of evasive twirl]
“Pardon.”
Repeat five or six times, and I’m in the final aisle, smiling because they finally have sliced Havarti. I make my way toward the 10-or-15-Items-or-Less lane –it all depends on which sign you follow. But before I can get there I have to make it past the final series of bottlenecks: a ginormous Pepsi end-cap, the ice cream freezer of indecision, an Aztec pyramid of that toilet paper those cartoon bears use, a drink cooler of brightly colored impulse buys, and finally a 90-degree left turn immediately into the express lane.
Ornamental Illnesses 