I don’t shop. I don’t browse. I don’t purview. In almost each and every case where I go out to buy stuff, I know where the stuff is, and how much the stuff will cost.  There are items I will almost always need once a week or so, and I know where they are, how much they cost, and almost always there are no booby traps or venomous snakes hiding behind any of these items.

As an aside from this rant, I once went to the grocery store and someone had hidden a rubber snake under some produce. The woman who picked up the bag of grapes and found it screamed “SHIT!”  Her brain kicked in a split second later and she turned a bright red color.  I tried not to laugh.  No, really, I did.

I understand the elderly. I understand the infirm. I understand the people who for lack of the mental facilities must stop in the middle of the aisle and stare at an item as if their gaze in and of itself might bring resolution to their needs. I understand that some people just love walking around a store and taking in the sights. No, actually I don’t understand that a damn bit.

Hence, the rant.

I have two choices, and two choices only; I can shop locally in Quitman, and the one grocery store, or I can shop in Valdosta at the big chain store.  I much rather go to the big chain store because there are fewer Lost Souls there. It is more crowded, but I can actually get in, checkout, and be gone without some social meltdown stopping me dead in my tracks.  The prices aren’t that much different and the selection is better, too.  But Valdosta is twenty-five miles away. I have to shop locally on occasion, and when I do, it’s much like entering some consumer Twilight Zone.

I’ve never seen, or rather heard anything like what happens in this store. It’s a local chain, with maybe ten or twelve stores scattered about the area, and they have their own in store radio station. The station doesn’t alert shoppers to the latest bargain, nor does it inform as to what might be on sale tomorrow, or next week. Instead it exhorts the store’s virtues in a general form.  It’s propaganda to a captive audience, but the people listening to the commercial are already in the store! Are they trying to keep us from making a break towards the exit, or do they want, perhaps, for us to just set up and live there? I’m in the store. Shut up.

Yet the store itself seems to be populated with people in no particular hurry or reason to be there at all.  They shuffle around the store like zombies shopping for spare parts. Brains aisle three! Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle.  Let two of the zombie shufflers meet mid aisle and  it’s best just to go the long way around them.  I did that one day. I turned around, went back down the aisle, took a left, then another left, and went alllll the way around someone blocking the aisle, just to keep from having to get around the woman and her brace of kids. When I arrived on the other side she gave me a dirty look. What? Was I suppose to let you waste my time a little while longer before you decided to gain control of your kids, or your buggy, or your brain? Was there in fact, some difference between one can of tomatoes and another so totally vast that we all should wait for your wisdom to kick in, like a hushed audience at some golf tournament?

*whispering golf announcer* Yes, ladies and gentlemen here at aisle three we have Brenda Zombie about to decide on a can of tomatoes. Last week she was looking at Hunt’s but this week it might be Del Monte. She was out of action most of last year giving birth to her third child in the store’s bathroom but she picked up right where she left off in aisle four, I tell you she’s a real pro.”

Okay, I know moms have to take their kids with them or duct tape them to the wall, but if you have more than two or three might you keep them from forming some sort of preschooler barricade at the grocery store? Is it possible for kids to stand close together, or at least scatter out so someone could pass. For a split second I saw one of the kids standing in the Aisle like Gandolf in Moria,and  I thought the little bugger might scream, “You shall not pass!”

Where is a Balrog when you really need one?

Rant ends,

Mike