Apparently today was Take Your Mother to the Grocery Store Day. I went to pick up a few things and there were about a dozen middle-aged women with their mothers in tow. So in every aisle there were these pairs of women shuffling along and trying to decide exactly what mom wanted for dinner. And this necessitated a lot of weaving back and forth, completely unaware of other shoppers.
So I was ducking and weaving through the aisles, trying to avoid old ladies and wild walking canes. And as I was going along, every older lady I passed would clutch her purse a little closer to her chest and glare at me. At first I thought I was making things up in my head, but after the fifth time it happened I started to get annoyed.
And I’m not some 17 year-old hooligan or anything. I’m flippin’ 30. I even looked at my outfit to see if I had accidentally grabbed my Bikini Kill t-shirt or something. Nope. Standard issue fitted black tee and khakis.
But there it was. Every little old lady found me a threat to their pocketbook. I wasn’t sure whether to be flattered or offended. I went with flattered.
But the biggest laugh I had was in the checkout lane. I was setting my cart on the ledge thingie for the checkout person when something caught my eye. There’s a little gift shop in the store and when their seasonal stuff goes on clearance it ends up in kiosks next to the checkout lanes. And I noticed this little cup of chocolate lollipops. But what really caught my eye was that one had a portrait of John McCain on it.
What the fuck?
Not the McCain part, mind you. But the fact that there were these novelty over-sized chocolate lollipops with politicians’ faces on them. So I sort of pawed through the cup, but the McCain one was the only one that stuck out.
The checkout person noticed me looking at them and (probably noticing the quizzical look on my face) said that they used to have a bunch of McCain and Obama but now the only ones left were Paris Hilton. I nodded.
Because, she continued, “Apparently no one wants Paris Hilton on a stick.”