I’m out of breath as I sprint across the parking lot and almost run into the automated glass doors. They slide apart to reveal an obese, middle-aged woman about to exit the supermarket with a squeaky shopping cart full of groceries. The brown paper bags on the child seat obscure the bottom half of her pudgy face. The transparent plastic bags in the basket conceal most of the woman’s rotund body. I’m so distracted by her immense size that I come within inches of bumping into her cart.
“I’m really sorry.” I say as I shuffle to the side.
The woman is silent. Her face freezes up with an icy scowl. She glares at me like I don’t belong here. She trudges by me as if I don’t matter. Slowly, she pushes her groceries toward a lone minivan parked in one of the handicapped spaces. Looking back at me with disdain, she shakes her head and continues on her way.
A big part of me wants to go outside and smack her. It’s not like I did anything wrong. Sure, I almost bumped into her cart, but it’s not like I hurt her. She didn’t have to get an attitude. I apologized, got out of the way and let her pass. What more does this woman want from me? Does she really expect me to get down on bended knee and beg for forgiveness? The fat lady will have to shatter a piece of glass while singing Mariah Carey’s “Someday” before that ever happens.
As much as I want to go out to the parking lot right now, it’s better for me to be the bigger person – even if she is twice my size. Determined to do the right thing, I act like nothing happened and march past the deli and into the produce section. But, on my way to the produce section, I get this nagging feeling I’m missing something. There’s so much on my mind tonight – much more than usual. My thoughts wander for a moment before I realize that I forgot to grab a shopping cart. I stop in my tracks, turn around and rush out to the rows of nested carts in front of the store.
I test out a few of them before finding one that rolls properly. Since I don’t have a car anymore, I have to borrow one of their carts, take it home with my groceries and then return it to the store before I can come back home to finally get some sleep. Tonight I’m going to put about two miles on that cart, which is why I prefer to do my grocery shopping alone and in the dark.
The first cart I test makes a high-pitched, screeching sound. The second one is too wobbly. The third one has trash in it. Exasperated, I grab an unattended cart left behind by the recycling machine, but it barely moves. Something is lodged in one of the front swivel wheels. I try to move the cart back and forth. After giving it a firm push, a twisted beverage straw falls out. The cart bolts forward and escapes my grasp. I lunge over to halt it before it strikes a heavyset, old lady with a wrinkly turkey neck walking out of the store.
“Sorry about that,” I say as I hold the cart in place.
“Watch where you’re going,” she says with a sneer. “You people have no manners.” That rude woman gives me a dirty look and walks off with a lumbering gait.
What does she mean by you people?
Taking a deep breath to calm my nerves and trying to restrain my anger, I sift through my purse and pull out a long shopping list with grocery items scrawled down in sparkling blue ink on a half-sheet of my daughter’s notebook filler paper. Before I lost my job, I would always save my lists in Evernote, which was super convenient because it helped me keep everything organized. The little boxes I used to check everything off my list was one of my favorite features. That changed after they let me go. Every time I used Evernote to keep track of my groceries, the other shoppers seemed bothered because I had a smartphone. It got to the point where I couldn’t stand it when people stared at me for using the three-year-old iPhone 4S my brother gave me when he added me to his family plan after my contract with Verizon expired. Now I do it the old-fashioned way and write everything down with my daughter’s retractable gel-ink pen.
Under normal circumstances, my list would be organized in order of importance. The problem is that everything on my list is important. We’re in desperate need of milk, cheese, cereal, oatmeal, rice, eggs, chicken, fish, ground beef, canned soup, dried pasta, sandwich bread, lunchmeat, fruits and vegetables – and my kids’ favorite – peanut butter and jelly. Lately, I’ve been organizing everything according to price only to find that it all costs too much.
As I stare at my crinkled shopping list, I realize most of the groceries we need won’t even make it into my cart, let alone my refrigerator or pantry. I have just under $60 left for groceries and less than thirty minutes to purchase them. The store will be closing soon. To be on the safe side, I set my limit at $55 to include taxes. There’s no way I can afford to use my debit card to make up the difference tonight. The last time I did that I accidentally overdrew my checking account and got charged with three overdraft fees after several payments I made a few days earlier posted at the same time. A week before that happened, I forgot about my auto insurance premium, which used to be electronically deducted from my account. My oversight is what knocked me into a deep hole, but it was Bank of America that shoveled the dirt to bury me. Bank of America refused to reverse the fees. It took me well over a month to pay most of them off. Right now I still have a negative balance on my Bank of America account and I can’t use my other account because Chase imposed a levy. The worst part is that my savings account has nothing left in it and all my active credit cards are maxed out. The other ones are in default. Thank God they haven’t raided my kids’ 529 college savings plan yet.
To think the government bailed out B of A and Chase because they were too big to fail. Now they’re back in business doing what they do best – stealing our money with their outrageous fees. What about the rest of us? Don’t we deserve a bailout, too? Are we just too small to matter? The next time – and there will be a next time – we should just let them fail. It’d serve them right...
