Tales of M. Married with Children
Writing from Shakespeare Café again. It’s a nice day. The heatwave is over. Four times out of five, the atmosphere in the café is nice.Today, just as it was a few days ago, it is not. It’s Americans again but only one this time. It’s a twenty something year old female, blond, blue, and loud. She will not shut her mouth. The loudness of her voice is appropriate for a noisy bar or something but definitely not a quiet café. Everybody can hear every word seh says. I can hear every word she says, and I am on the other side of the room. I also have significant hearing loss.That should give an idea of her behaviour. Everybody else is either speaking quietly or is silent. I don’t know if it’s always been this way with American tourists. Until a few years ago, Chinese tourists acted that way, but suddenly, the bad behaviour stopped. I think it had to do with being newly wealthy and the time it took to learn how to behave. They are now polite, quiet, and generally well-behaved. Americans are by far the most obnoxious nationality of tourist.
Another reason I didn’t enjoy cooking is because my last American girlfriend wouldn’t let me in the kitchen - of my own house, and before that, Psycho Suzie, another girlfriend, said everything I tried to cook was disgusting. That is when I quit trying to learn. Thus, for most of my adult life, I ate out.
We were still in the suburbs.
“In that case, I will cook, and you will wash the dishes. We will buy groceries, and we should do it while we’re still in the city. It will be cheaper than the grocery stores at the resort. There is a grocery store nearby that I like,” she said.
“Okay.” I said.
I’ve been trying to cultivate a sense of civic responsibility and a social conscience since I was a teenager. Despite amount of time I’ve spent on it, I’ve only been minimally successful. In terms of commerce, it’s usually limited to avoiding Walmart, MacDonalds, and supermarkets. When given a choice, I pass them by, even when it means that I go hungry half the day with dangerously low blood sugar and have to pay more money for the same thing at the local grocery store or co-op when I finally find one.
Drusila was driving, and I didn’t see that I had any choice. It would only be this one time that I had to go, so I didn’t complain. One must be able to adapt, and being a good travelling companion was my priority.
She drove quickly through a grid of sharp turns and pulled into an enormous covered parking garage a couple of hectares in size. (It was huge.) She drove nearly as fast around the maze of parking rows in the garage for ten minutes until we found an open space and parked.
The building this belonged to was a Walmart sized supermarket. It reminded me of my Walmart days, and I was not pleased. That was the second Red Flag.
Usually, the kind of people who go these places, especially on a Saturday, are harried families with children and other suburbanites who are insensitive to the effect that chain supermarkets and other huge corporate franchise stores have had on the livelihoods of mom and pop grocers and other independently owned businesses.
She asked me to get a buggy for the groceries. I never use buggies when I buy groceries, but would make an exception and not complain. Still, I was worried.
I could list dozens of reasons I hate shopping buggies, but the short answer is this: the wheels squick on the tile floors. Squicking is sound that is like the sound made by tennis shoes rubbing on the waxed floor of a basketball court but a lot worse. It is high pitched and does not stop. I can’t stand it - it’s like fingernails on a chalkboard. This sound is different from the loud squeaking of wheels with bad bearings or unoiled casters. If it were only so simple as rusty bearings in the buggy’s wheels, the solution would be to find a buggy that does not have bad bearings. That’s not possible because all carts of the same design make this sound on a given floor. That was an additional half a Red Flag for Drusila.
I found the carts. They were in a blocked off section of the asphalt parking lot, and they were arranged in long trains like freight cars in a rail yard.
I pulled on the end cart of one of the trains, but something was wrong. The cart would not separate from the train. I tried another train. It wouldn’t budge either.
“Drusilla, help me please,” I said.
I waved at her. By now, she was way over at the store entrance. She came back.
“You have to put a token in it,” she said.
“Where do I find a token and where do I put it?”
“Why don’t you know how to do this? Here,” she said.
That sharp voice and rude comment worried me. Although I didn’t believe it, I had been warned that French women are bossy. Another Red Flag for Drusila. Fifteen minutes into the trip and she had already racked up three and a half Red Flags. You can learn a lot about somebody by grocery shopping with them.
She took a token from a token machine that was operated by a cart attendant. It was several meters away from the carts, and its purpose was not obvious. I was puzzled as to why somebody was being paid to operate a machine that dispensed cart tokens.
I looked at the cart and tried to find the place to put the token.
“Give it to me,” she said.
I handed her the token. She put the token in a slot in the handle of the cart, and this action freed the cart on the back end of the train.
“Now you know how to do it when you come back,” she said.
Today, I had already learned that supermarkets have taken to securing their carts with token operated locking mechanisms. It was not this way when I last used one during childhood. To make the system more obfuscated, one has to beg the token from a cart attendant. There are a lot of the things about how modern society works that I don’t know about, don’t care about, and would prefer to live to the end of my life without ever knowing. Learning to use the carts at supermarkets is one of them.
I hadn’t even entered the store, and I had realised that I would have been happy to have shopped on my own and to have payed an extra 10 percent at the village general store at Alpe D’Huez. I’ve avoided the suburban lifestyle since childhood. I was surprised that suburbanites such as herself had made it to the party at the city center where I met her. It was difficult to deal with the supermarket and this woman’s nonsense, and I feared that it would trigger a migraine.
We entered the store. She walked fast, and I pushed the cart behind her, trying to keep up. I felt like a retard on a trip to the zoo. Drusilla was my caregiver.
Crowds, families with children running around, noise, thousands of carts - all of their wheels squicking incessantly on the tile floor, glaring fluorescent lighting, signs, advertisements trying to steal my attention and get my money, shelves and shelves of tens of thousands of different things I would never want to eat -- the totality of it all overloaded my senses and was oppressive. It reminded me of a bad trip.
It was not possible to move in a straight line for more than a few steps. Progress was slow. We had to dodge people who weren’t looking where they were going, and we often had to stop and wait for others to quit clogging the aisles. Many were simply standing with their carts and blocking the aisles. They were stopped, gossiping with companions, chatting on their phones, disciplining their children, counting coupons, and reading sales papers, among other things. The vast majority chose to undertake these activities in locations that would block traffic.
Close to the entrance were vegetables. The very first food items she put in the buggy were onions and garlic.
“I can’t eat either of those. I’m allergic,“ I said.
“Nobody’s allergic to garlic or onions. Come on, they’re good for you.”
“I will probably die in my sleep if I eat thme. If I survive, I’ll be sick all week. I really am allergic.”
“Come on,” she said.
Another Red Flag. She is bossy and has a contrary attitude.
She walked fast, weaving through the crowd, always headed deeper into the center aisles. An important rule when grocery shopping at supermarkets is to avoid the center aisles. They are full of crap, and the good food is on the perimeter. I trailed behind, pushing the huge buggy, which was slowed by the dithering shoppers and buggies that had been parked in the middle of the aisle.
Next, she found the peanut butter, Nutela, and other spreads. She grabbed a jar of peanut butter.
“I’m allergic.”
“Come on,” she said with a distinct note of impatience in her voice.
She took off again, weaving through aisles that were so crowded that there was barely room to walk unless you turned sideways and sucked in your stomach. I was left trailing behind with the cart like a Special Needs adult.
Then she took me to the dairy milk.
“Lactose intolerant…”
The witch huffed and walked away.
Writing from Shakespeare Café again. It’s a nice day. The heatwave is over. Four times out of five, the atmosphere in the café is nice.Today, just as it was a few days ago, it is not. It’s Americans again but only one this time. It’s a twenty something year old female, blond, blue, and loud. She will not shut her mouth. The loudness of her voice is appropriate for a noisy bar or something but definitely not a quiet café. Everybody can hear every word seh says. I can hear every word she says, and I am on the other side of the room. I also have significant hearing loss.That should give an idea of her behaviour. Everybody else is either speaking quietly or is silent. I don’t know if it’s always been this way with American tourists. Until a few years ago, Chinese tourists acted that way, but suddenly, the bad behaviour stopped. I think it had to do with being newly wealthy and the time it took to learn how to behave. They are now polite, quiet, and generally well-behaved. Americans are by far the most obnoxious nationality of tourist.
Another reason I didn’t enjoy cooking is because my last American girlfriend wouldn’t let me in the kitchen - of my own house, and before that, Psycho Suzie, another girlfriend, said everything I tried to cook was disgusting. That is when I quit trying to learn. Thus, for most of my adult life, I ate out.
We were still in the suburbs.
“In that case, I will cook, and you will wash the dishes. We will buy groceries, and we should do it while we’re still in the city. It will be cheaper than the grocery stores at the resort. There is a grocery store nearby that I like,” she said.
“Okay.” I said.
I’ve been trying to cultivate a sense of civic responsibility and a social conscience since I was a teenager. Despite amount of time I’ve spent on it, I’ve only been minimally successful. In terms of commerce, it’s usually limited to avoiding Walmart, MacDonalds, and supermarkets. When given a choice, I pass them by, even when it means that I go hungry half the day with dangerously low blood sugar and have to pay more money for the same thing at the local grocery store or co-op when I finally find one.
Drusila was driving, and I didn’t see that I had any choice. It would only be this one time that I had to go, so I didn’t complain. One must be able to adapt, and being a good travelling companion was my priority.
She drove quickly through a grid of sharp turns and pulled into an enormous covered parking garage a couple of hectares in size. (It was huge.) She drove nearly as fast around the maze of parking rows in the garage for ten minutes until we found an open space and parked.
The building this belonged to was a Walmart sized supermarket. It reminded me of my Walmart days, and I was not pleased. That was the second Red Flag.
Usually, the kind of people who go these places, especially on a Saturday, are harried families with children and other suburbanites who are insensitive to the effect that chain supermarkets and other huge corporate franchise stores have had on the livelihoods of mom and pop grocers and other independently owned businesses.
She asked me to get a buggy for the groceries. I never use buggies when I buy groceries, but would make an exception and not complain. Still, I was worried.
I could list dozens of reasons I hate shopping buggies, but the short answer is this: the wheels squick on the tile floors. Squicking is sound that is like the sound made by tennis shoes rubbing on the waxed floor of a basketball court but a lot worse. It is high pitched and does not stop. I can’t stand it - it’s like fingernails on a chalkboard. This sound is different from the loud squeaking of wheels with bad bearings or unoiled casters. If it were only so simple as rusty bearings in the buggy’s wheels, the solution would be to find a buggy that does not have bad bearings. That’s not possible because all carts of the same design make this sound on a given floor. That was an additional half a Red Flag for Drusila.
I found the carts. They were in a blocked off section of the asphalt parking lot, and they were arranged in long trains like freight cars in a rail yard.
I pulled on the end cart of one of the trains, but something was wrong. The cart would not separate from the train. I tried another train. It wouldn’t budge either.
“Drusilla, help me please,” I said.
I waved at her. By now, she was way over at the store entrance. She came back.
“You have to put a token in it,” she said.
“Where do I find a token and where do I put it?”
“Why don’t you know how to do this? Here,” she said.
That sharp voice and rude comment worried me. Although I didn’t believe it, I had been warned that French women are bossy. Another Red Flag for Drusila. Fifteen minutes into the trip and she had already racked up three and a half Red Flags. You can learn a lot about somebody by grocery shopping with them.
She took a token from a token machine that was operated by a cart attendant. It was several meters away from the carts, and its purpose was not obvious. I was puzzled as to why somebody was being paid to operate a machine that dispensed cart tokens.
I looked at the cart and tried to find the place to put the token.
“Give it to me,” she said.
I handed her the token. She put the token in a slot in the handle of the cart, and this action freed the cart on the back end of the train.
“Now you know how to do it when you come back,” she said.
Today, I had already learned that supermarkets have taken to securing their carts with token operated locking mechanisms. It was not this way when I last used one during childhood. To make the system more obfuscated, one has to beg the token from a cart attendant. There are a lot of the things about how modern society works that I don’t know about, don’t care about, and would prefer to live to the end of my life without ever knowing. Learning to use the carts at supermarkets is one of them.
I hadn’t even entered the store, and I had realised that I would have been happy to have shopped on my own and to have payed an extra 10 percent at the village general store at Alpe D’Huez. I’ve avoided the suburban lifestyle since childhood. I was surprised that suburbanites such as herself had made it to the party at the city center where I met her. It was difficult to deal with the supermarket and this woman’s nonsense, and I feared that it would trigger a migraine.
We entered the store. She walked fast, and I pushed the cart behind her, trying to keep up. I felt like a retard on a trip to the zoo. Drusilla was my caregiver.
Crowds, families with children running around, noise, thousands of carts - all of their wheels squicking incessantly on the tile floor, glaring fluorescent lighting, signs, advertisements trying to steal my attention and get my money, shelves and shelves of tens of thousands of different things I would never want to eat -- the totality of it all overloaded my senses and was oppressive. It reminded me of a bad trip.
It was not possible to move in a straight line for more than a few steps. Progress was slow. We had to dodge people who weren’t looking where they were going, and we often had to stop and wait for others to quit clogging the aisles. Many were simply standing with their carts and blocking the aisles. They were stopped, gossiping with companions, chatting on their phones, disciplining their children, counting coupons, and reading sales papers, among other things. The vast majority chose to undertake these activities in locations that would block traffic.
Close to the entrance were vegetables. The very first food items she put in the buggy were onions and garlic.
“I can’t eat either of those. I’m allergic,“ I said.
“Nobody’s allergic to garlic or onions. Come on, they’re good for you.”
“I will probably die in my sleep if I eat thme. If I survive, I’ll be sick all week. I really am allergic.”
“Come on,” she said.
Another Red Flag. She is bossy and has a contrary attitude.
She walked fast, weaving through the crowd, always headed deeper into the center aisles. An important rule when grocery shopping at supermarkets is to avoid the center aisles. They are full of crap, and the good food is on the perimeter. I trailed behind, pushing the huge buggy, which was slowed by the dithering shoppers and buggies that had been parked in the middle of the aisle.
Next, she found the peanut butter, Nutela, and other spreads. She grabbed a jar of peanut butter.
“I’m allergic.”
“Come on,” she said with a distinct note of impatience in her voice.
She took off again, weaving through aisles that were so crowded that there was barely room to walk unless you turned sideways and sucked in your stomach. I was left trailing behind with the cart like a Special Needs adult.
Then she took me to the dairy milk.
“Lactose intolerant…”
The witch huffed and walked away.