that guy and emergency soup

Sometimes your retail experience has nothing to do with the store, the staff, their policies or anything other than another patron. 

 

Earlier this week a coworker - who graciously gives me rides home with her and, even better, sometimes takes me to the grocery store on that trip - and I were doing such an errand.  Like all mass merchandisers during the after-work hour the place was busy and so were the lines.  And that’s where we met ‘that guy’.  A suburbanite.  Vaguely European.  Was once what he considered attractive, with, now, slightly too long and slightly too greasy hair, a wardrobe make primarily of fabric ending in ‘lon’ and whatever replaced tear-away pants, and the worst of it – a cell phone stuck to his ear in the on position. 

While he did offer my 10 year-or-so younger acquaintance a jump in the line, he wasn’t willing to do so for both of us.

 

I also have to admit I was totally fascinated by what was in his buggy.  Namely about 204 assorted sized diapers, enough formula mix to feed an orphanage, two tins of beans and several freeze dried meals.   So now I’m both amused and curious.  Other than the fact that he lost control of a box of about 128 diapers at one point which careened our way – is careened the correct word to describe a large, lightweight box covered in pictures of baby asses in motion?  But I digress.  He managed to get all these goods up on the belt one handed and check out and never once stop his phone conversation!  

Now I haven’t had a husband for awhile and I do notice that with the cell phone revolution all husbands, on their own, at the  market are doing their wives shopping by proxy, but they are usually trusted to pay the bill on their own.

And what does this have to do with emergency soup?  Nothing.  I keep a can of so called emergency soup in my cupboards for those nights when life has taken up too much your day and your evening and by the time you get home and are ready to collapse and have zero interest in making or even ordering food, I break out the ‘emergency soup’ which is almost exclusively Campbell Cream of Mushroom or Tomato.  And tonight is one of those nights.