1lb of sara lee oven roasted

Ok, I wasn't going to release this to the public, but once I get started, I find it hard to stop. It begins with a life lesson about the grocery store. I really like going to the grocery store, especially on the weekends. If you time it right on Saturday mornings, you can get there before it gets way busy, but there are still lots of little kids running around like Super Walmart is the coolest place in the universe. Somehow they don't seem to remember that the cereal aisle has the same stuff in it as the last week they were there. And if the old ladies with the free samples are out, you'd better watch where you drive your cart because to a 5 year old, a restaurant that serves free miniature pizzas just opened on aisle 10 and they don't really give a flip if your cart is in the way. Anyway, the purpose of this is to tell you about unwritten rules of shopping cart etiquette that we all know about and the bizarre incidents that can result when people violate these rules. The primary rule with a shopping cart is this:

You don't go up to someone's cart as if it's your own.

You might get kinda close to it while passing it, or you might stand by it momentarily while making a selection from a shelf, but even if you do get right up next to it, it's almost always on your side or behind you. It's not like you ever get up next to someone's cart and stand facing it. If you have ever done this, it's probably because you thought it was your own cart, like I have done. You then get a little embarrassed and sometimes try to play it off like you weren't about to put something in that cart or you weren't checking out the contents of the cart. Then, you move away like a regular person and keep a good 2-4 feet of space between you and the other person's cart. I believe this rule exists because the cart sort of becomes an extension of your personal belongings as long as you're in the store and Americans, in general, give people a lot of distance for their personal space. Of course, normally this doesn't even really come up because you usually just drive your cart around the store, get your stuff, and then proceed to check out. This whole set of rules comes into play when you occasionally opt to temporarily abandon your cart to acquire some item and then return with the item in hand. If multiple individuals engage in this technique in the same row, the potential exists for cross-cart contamination or, at the very least, cart dominance confusion (wherein one party attempts to 'dominate' a cart by standing quite close to the cart, believing it to be his own, when in fact he is mistakenly standing *way* too close to a cart that is not his own). A variant of this phenomenon can occur at the deli line, which is in fact where our story takes place.

Now, usually everyone at the deli line can handle his/her cart with no problems. Each person keeps his cart directly in front of him, or perhaps slightly off to the side, but still in a position where they are clearly dominant over the cart. Ok well, on Sunday, I was standing in the deli line waiting to purchase some sliced turkey (as I am wont to do), and this woman came up to me in blatant disregard of all of the rules I have just described. At first, I thought that it was nothing more than a woman speaking at an inappropriate volume in the deli section at the Super Walmart. A slight rotation of my head revealed that, in actuality, her head was approximately 1.5 ft from my head and that if I had taken about half a step backwards, I would essentially be "up in her grill." I found this disturbing. The distance was such that if I had turned completely around, we were *almost* at a distance where you could comfortably slow dance with someone. It freaks me out just thinking of this moment now. She was maybe in her 40s or so, and so I thought that maybe she needed to be up close to the counter to read the labels in the case. This assumption proved false as she continued to stand directly behind me, well after she knew which product she was going to purchase. She loudly called again for her husband/boyfriend type person. He obediently came forward, bringing with him a cart that blocked a possible exit move for me to the left. Just before his arrival, I had been considering a shift to my left because it would have left me in a position to still be dominant over my cart, but yet get the flip away from this woman who, because of her blatant disregard for not only my own personal space but that of my cart as well, appeared to have some type of mental illness or something. I didn't know for sure but I wanted her to get up off of my Campbell's soup and whatnot before whatever sickness robbed her of her good sense infected me or my purchases. My only real way out of the situation would have been to move right, but then the two of them would have been much closer to my cart that I was, and that just felt wrong. Anyway, this whole time, the deli person was slicing up my turkey, so I just went back to staring straight ahead because I didn't really know what else to do. Now, you must believe me that this next part totally happened. The turkey was being weighed so I made overt movements towards my cart, letting Mr. Stands Too Close know through body language that he would soon have to move. He was distracted though, because, at the exact moment I was making these moves, he took a little piece of banana from his hand and FED IT DIRECTLY INTO THE MOUTH OF THE WOMAN. I was like 2 feet from this event so do not try and tell me I made a mistake. I saw it and it was the real deal. And it wasn't like 'awww-newlyweds-feeding-each-other-some-cake-type' feeding. Her movements were distinctly animal-like, as in the way a dog will lunge his head forward briefly to take a treat. I almost made both visible and audible expressions of my disgust, but I managed to restrain both impulses and proceeded to the checkout. I think a little piece of banana might have fallen close to my cart, but I couldn't be sure. I threw away the soup that I bought just so that I could sleep that night. True story.