Using My Chicken Noodle . . .  There was a sale on soup, you understand. Campbell's soup. Different varieties. Not the real classy ones, like Broccoli with Cheddar Cheese and Bacon Bits. Just the basic ones. Tomato. Chicken Noodle. Vegetable. Cream of Mushroom. I didn't mind. I laid a good bushel of those red and white cans on the bottom of my rusty cart and began to creak my way towards the checkout.
As I was heading down the frozen food aisle, my attention was diverted by a large SALE sign on the Breyer's Ice-Cream freezer. I like ice cream even more than I like soup, but I realise it's not really all that nutritional. My sister claims that they put antifreeze in it. I'm not 100% sure that's true. After all, why would they put antifreeze in something that they wanted frozen? Wouldn't that be sort of self-defeating? Well, maybe it's a paradox of some sort.
Like I said, my attention was diverted, and that's when I heard a sharp thump, and my cart stopped on a dime.
When I looked ahead of me, I saw that I had collided into the front of another shopping cart, one filled to overflowing with a variety of paper items, mostly toilet paper, in those family-size packs of 124 rolls. That's all I saw, and I wondered who the cart belonged to and where the heck that person was. I admit that I didn't care all that much, really. I just wanted to get by. So I proceeded to ram the renegade cart out of the way with my own cart. Imagine my horror when I heard a voice suddenly crone out from somewhere beneath my front wheels.
"You can stop running me over now," the breathless voice croaked.
I looked down, and there on the floor of the grocery store was the tiniest of elderly ladies that I have ever seen. The original impact had knocked her back on her rear end, and she was spinning her legs in the strangest motions in an effort to raise her 4 foot body back into vertical mode.
"Oh my god," I moaned with genuine sincerity, "I didn't see you there."
"No," she shot back at me, "you don't look, do you? You'd rather just run me over, you big hulking bastard."
Yes, I was surprised too. She seemed so frail and diminutive in stature, but her mouth had the voice of giants.
"I'm so sorry," I said in something of a falsetto, and I rushed to help her up.
She spit at my hand as I reached down to her. Yes, that's right -- she spit at me and flailed her arms in an effort to shoo me away.
"Don't touch me, you moronic goat," she sputtered, "don't touch me, you friggin' lunatic."
So I stepped back. One step. Two steps. Back behind the safety of my shopping cart.
By then, a small crowd of store clerks and other pay-it-forward shoppers had begun to gather around the scene. One man, in the uniform of a store manager -- a stained white shirt and a greasy black tie under a full-length green apron -- arrived behind me and actually grabbed my right arm. I suppose he thought I was about to peel out of the store with my shopping cart full of soup cans and head for the freeway. I looked at him with my bad eye, and he suddenly let go. I sometimes wonder if I have the face of a serial killer. I'm sure, in such circumstances, I probably do.
Time seemed to be clicking by in slow motion, and I could honestly feel an anxiety attack coming on. Then, I finally saw a twist of peppery-white hair rise above the handlebars of the lady's shopping cart, and in the general commotion, you could hear people asking her if she was OK. The wrinkled face of this sad-eyed woman peered up at me, and, with a crooked nicotine-stained finger, she pointed my way.
"Him," she squeaked with a mournful voice. "He did it. He ran me down. Call the police. I want him charged."
I wondered what I could be charged with. Hit-and-run? Assault with a deadly shopping cart? My mind reeled. I imagined myself locked up in the local police station, trapped in a holding cell with an assortment of drunks, crackheads, and prostitutes for the night. For a moment, I felt as if I was 18 again, but that's another story.
Well, the police never were called, but the store manager did write down a bunch of stuff in a black notebook, the names of all involved, including those of about a dozen witnesses who appeared out of nowhere, or at best, from the baked goods aisle. Of course, I had to spell my name for the poor man several times, either because his hands were shaking from nervous excitement or because he really did have difficulty spelling Andy Warhol
So . . . anyone up for a bowl of Vegetable Vegetarian???
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