Into the Scrum

With the stunningly patient and mighty fine SML running hither and yon this morning visiting several of the women she is now working with in her Church service, I found we needed a few things from the extortion grocery store. So I went to the grocery store. This was an epic mistake (well not quite as epic as say "What do you mean there weren't any WMD's in Iraq?"-level mistake), but it was a mistake just the same. Why? Because the grocery store parking lot had been turned into a rugby scrum, wherein the players had been replaced by cars. I am not kidding you when I tell you every.single.parking.spot in this heinous store's lot was occupied. Cars were poring in and began moving in a pack, or a scrum, in search of an open spot. I almost - almost - felt bad for the unsuspecting shoppers leaving the store. The lead car saw them and would lead the hunt, stalking the shopper, giving them a few precious seconds to toss their overpriced goods into their car before the blaring of the horn from the lead car would begin. It was like watching the Kardashians stalk someone with cash in their pockets.

I watched this foolishness for a little while as I sought an opening and saw one. It was then that I remembered that driving a large 4-wheel drive SUV in a crowded parking lot does have its advantages. It's been says size matters and today, it did. I broke from the conga line of the damned, swinging around someone driving Connecticutistan's favorite car, the Subaru wagon (in any of its variants), and gunned it to the open spot. I think the way I squeezed into the spot so suddenly shocked the two store workers sitting in the car next to mine. They were clearly on their break and given the amount of cigarettes they were burning through, it suggested that things were going to be rough in the store. And they were.

I'd forgotten that today is the day before Valentine's Day and given the hysteria inside the store, you'd have thought we had another Super Storm Sandy event bearing down on us. Nope, not a super storm, just its merchandising equivalent. Turns out, at least here, people actually buy those heart-shaped boxes filled with dusty chocolate of questionable quality. They buy a lot of them because every check out line was backed up, with one exception. The apartchik that runs this particular store renamed one check out lane as "Lovers Lane" (I literally just threw up in my mouth writing that) and it was dedicated to floral purchases only. In every other lane, at least every other shopper had just flowers, and the last I checked, flowers constitute floral items, but the floral lane remained inexplicably closed. It wasn't like there wasn't a dearth of workers scurrying about, encouraging people to go swing by Floral and grab some flowers. But please don't use the lane dedicated to floral purchases. It's closed. Yep, it made sense to me too.

Happy to have made it through the (kind of) Express Lane sans flowers or V.D. accoutrement of any kind, I got back into my car and barreled my way out of the scrum and back to the sanctity of my basement to watch the end of the spanking that Chelsea gave to Newcastle. All was well in the world again.