grocery store voyeur

Watching other people, strangers, grocery shop is strangely voyeuristic. Oddly intriguing, as well, I guess. A huge warehouse space, crammed with every sort of potato chip, vegetable and frozen pizza, and complete strangers co-habitating in the name of food. Going about their business. But they are in their own little worlds. The business man in the suit on the cell phone in front of the milk cooler, calling his wife to see what kind the kids will drink. The little old lady, traveling down aisles almost monotonously, getting the same things she gets every week, only stopping to see what is on sale. The worn-out mother with three shrieking menaces following her, one in a tutu, the other two in karate uniforms, trying to get enough groceries to make it through the weekend and then leave. The two college roommates, stocking up on ramen, beer and chips, arguing about which football game to watch. Obviously today is pay day.
They won’t notice the other patrons wandering around the store, except to say a hurried ‘excuse me’ as they reach around a person to grab a bottle of Vanilla Coke, or to show a slim glimmer of recognition at the PTA mom they saw last week, or a member of their church. Most of the time, though, they handle their shopping carts, some of them half-broken with a wobbly wheel, with a certain amount of absent-minded aplomb, weaving in and out of people, around corners, and going about their routine, mentally planning out their meals for the week. They read labels, heads bent in concentration, they compare prices, they look forlorn when the store is out of their usual brand of maple syrup. Many have their cell phones attached to their ears, while others cross things off of their shopping lists, usually written on a post-it note or a scrap piece of paper.
Grocery shopping is routine. Every week, every other week, it happens. Day in and day out. People retreat back to another plane of consciousness, another state of mind, and sometimes the masks they wear in public slide off a little. The wear of the day shows through, they show the face they only give to the mirror in the morning. Maybe if we were all aware of each other, and were voyeurs to everyone’s grocery shopping adventures, we could see other people for who and what they were. Maybe we would have more friends. Maybe not. But we would see people, in an unadulterated state, and that is important. Grocery shopping returns people to pure. Pure humans, pure people, pure individuals. Pure hard lives, pure easy ones. It doesn’t matter anywhere else in the world, but we can see each other clearly over the tomatoes, identify with each other in the cream cheese section, and even connect in the toothpaste aisle.