Overland Park, KS

After circling the neighborhood for twenty minutes, I pin down the Rainbow foods I had spotted from the freeway. The lot is desolate. Carts are spilling out from the corral. I pause for a moment wondering if it is, in fact, a functional grocery store, or one that has gone out of business since the last update of my GPS unit two years ago. I venture in.

Every once in a while, I find myself in a grocery store like this, seemingly healthy and green from the outside and toppling with sugary cavity inducing pastry goods lining the walls like lick able wallpaper. The lettuce is aging and wrinkled, the fruit section is deteriorating from underneath the shadows of the doughnut table. The dairy section lining the back wall is fully stocked, while a lone lemon-lime can stands as the sole survivor of a victimized six pack atop empty shelves of the soda aisle.

Unable to find a basket, I tuck three yogurt containers under my left arm and Jenga the rest of my items atop a cereal box I’m carrying horizontally. I’m walking briskly back and forth, dodging the other twenty-somethings. They’re hard to miss. Anyone remotely close to my age is wielding a rather shiny speck of light on their finger and two or three snot faced children. I’m suddenly quite confident in all of my life decisions.

My balancing act is becoming more difficult as I add the one salvageable ball of lettuce to the stack.
I have three choices;
1). Walk back to the entrance and get a cart, which I will likely only fill the child seat of. Because I have that ability. Because I am here alone. Because I don’t have children. Suck it.
2). Check out. Leaving behind the beer which has at this point become necessary.
3). Deal with the looming scent of piss and apple juice that will inevitably cling to me after using the throat lozenges in my pocket to bribe the youngsters into carrying my groceries to the checkout counter.

I turn to survey the nearest toddler. His sticky chubby little fingers are slowly releasing his grasp around the handle of one of those child sized carts. He wanders away down the aisle to, presumably, his mom who is waving him towards the check out. I nudged the cart with my foot, wheeling it forward a few inches to see if he would run back down the aisle towards it. Nothing. I waste no time dropping my items into the basket-sized cart and turn the corner.

I hunch my shoulders in attempts to control the cart while maintaining a seemingly casual walk. It doesn’t quite work. The cart veers to the right with each push, a flag sporting the words “IN TRAINING” extended from the handle whipping me in the face with each nudge. I pause in the coffee aisle. I could easily begin calling out any name, and looking back and forth while pushing the cart and no one would be the wiser. Judging from the amount of bedazzled t-shirts, I’d fit right in.

Instead, I head towards the beer section, pile two six packs atop my salad fixings and make way for the check out.

“Awe, bring your little one with you today?” the cashier greets me, as I begin the Pilates workout of unloading a miniature cart onto the conveyer belt. She has my items completely bagged and is handing me my receipt as I respond with the only thing I can think of.

“Oh, he’s around here somewhere.” I look both directions in the store, shrug, and walk to the van.