I went to the grocery store on a Friday. Not as bad as a Saturday or a Sunday, but not as good as a Monday through Thursday. I don’t mind the grocery store as long as it’s completely empty, or almost at least. I like food. It’s people I don’t necessarily like. That sounds harsh. People are OK I guess, but when they are pushing shopping carts I find them completely intolerable. Friday it seemed like everyone got paid, and left work early to stock up the refrigerator for whatever weekend madness they have planned. Perhaps that’s what people were also thinking about as they meandered through the aisles aimlessly with their shopping carts, and made perfectly sure that there were no available spaces for the functional humans who might actually have other things to accomplish this day to maneuver through.

Starting with my man who walks up to the cart line to grab his cart, and stops in front of it to read a text message. Don’t get your cart and pull it over somewhere first!!! Read that message now! Make haste! No, it’s OK, I’ll wait here. You must be confused with that alternate universe in which you are the only person in it. It’s ok, I’ll just pretend to look at the massive display of Oreo cookies which are promotionally priced. While I daydream about Oreos, you daydream about some ridiculous weekend decision like which checkered shirt to wear to Phil’s Barbecue, and whether or not Stacey is gonna bring any of her single friends this time. I know based on the fact that you don’t possess the intelligence to pull a shopping cart out of the stack and move it to the side, or alternately move yourself to the side, so other people can shop here too, that you will have a weekend highlighted by your own mediocrity, and if you do manage to get a girl’s phone number, it will be a fake, and you won’t have removed enough barbecue sauce from your ignorant little fingers to accurately punch it into your phone anyway.

Or the Fifty-something guy who is staring at the canned corn with his shopping cart JUST DIAGNONAL ENOUGH to prevent another cart from getting by. I wait patiently, listening to Air Supply on the speakers. How much analysis can you possibly do on canned corn? Let me run it down for you. The name brand one costs more, but they’re both exactly the same. Make sure you check for dents in the can. Are you waiting for the cans of corn to start dancing? That would be about the only reasonable excuse for standing there in full on space cadet mode with your cart blocking the aisle. Just tell me that the show’s about to start, because if these cans of corn start dancing, I will park my cart diagonally as well and watch the show with you, only after I pick up some Cheetos from aisle #3. Oh, they aren’t about to dance? THEN MOVE YOUR CART!! GET OUT OF THE WAY!!! STARE AT CORN WHEN YOU GET HOME!! Or are you trying to avoid going home? Is your wife gonna make you clean the windows and trim the hedges? Are you stalling? I understand, just move your cart to the side.

Or the obnoxious lady checking every single egg in the package. Both sides. While standing in the doorway of the fridge, so less OCD people could just grab some eggs, do a cursory glance at them and check the date. She’s checking them over like she’s at the antique road show trying to put in a bid on some hand crafted trinkets from the 18th century, not like they are something that she will crack in half in less than 2 weeks, and guess where her cart is while she’s doing this? Blocking the way! Was there ever a doubt. She’s obviously thinking about how her life is spinning out of control, and making sure that these eggs are absolutely perfect is the only way to bring some semblance of order to her existence. The irony here being that if she only went through life as the type of person who didn’t stand in the fridge doorway blocking people from getting eggs while her shopping cart blocked the aisle, that she would probably be in a better place where she didn’t have to make sure her eggs were perfectly crafted works of chicken magic.

I of course would also be able to get home quicker.