It Takes a Village to Get Out of the Supermarket

I have developed a habit of staying up until three o’clock in the morning and waking up around 11 a.m. Even though I am on vacation and even though my vacation will come to an end shortly, I still feel like a complete slacker. Maybe it’s because I’ve been on the working person’s grind for so long that any time I take to stop and smell the roses just feels wrong.

For better or for worse, I finally made it out of bed close to midday this morning only to find a great big pile of nothing to eat for breakfast; no yogurt, no pancake mix, no fruit, no granola, no nothing. My kitchen was in a sad state of affairs and it was clear to me that I needed to stop being lazy and make a fill-up-the-cart shopping trip to the supermarket.

Practicality takes a back seat when I wake up to disasters such as an empty kitchen. Of course I could have gone to Food Lion, it’s right down the street. But, how can I put this…the selection at Food Lion is so mundane. Food Lion would definitely do if I needed one thing or two, like a can of tomato sauce or some unsalted peanuts, but there was absolutely nothing in my kitchen. I had to do it up big. So, I got on the highway and went to Whole Foods, the Charlottesville location.

Traffic wasn’t bad and I arrived at the lovely gourmet corner of the world around 2 p.m. Since it is Saturday, as one would expect, the place was packed. There were lots of people to see and plenty of things to buy. I am a regular and can make my way through “my Whole Foods” with my eyes closed. If I were to bump into a shelf, the employees know me well enough to turn me in any direction I would choose to go.

I braved the crowds and loaded up my cart with most of what I needed and even more of what I did not. After having a lively chat with one of the employees I’ve known for years-I’ll call him Wise-I left the store. And that’s when things got hairy.

Here’s what happened: among the many things I bought was a large oval shaped watermelon. It was under my cart-the place where we put the stuff that’s too heavy to lift up into the cart. As luck would have it, the Whole Foods parking lot is on a downhill slope. So, just as soon as I wheeled my cart onto the sidewalk, the watermelon slide out from under the cart took off rolling.

I was frantic. My ability to figure out how to salvage the situation dwindled fast as I watched my watermelon roll down the parking lot at what seemed like 90 miles per hour. I truly did not know what to do. If I let go of my cart to save the watermelon, I thought, the cart could roll into oblivion and maybe hit a car or hit a person. If I were to let the watermelon keep rolling, someone could trip over it, or worse, drive over it and there goes my six bucks. Either way, I was frozen like a deer in the headlights and just when circuit board in my brain was about to send out a fatal error occurrence report, a fellow shopper came up behind me and said, “I’ll hold the cart, you get the watermelon.”

Okay. Problem solved but I had to decide quickly. Could trust this random shopper with my cart full of groceries and, more importantly, my handbag? The decision was easy. I threw caution to the wind and took off running to save the watermelon. I was stunned that I could run as fast as I did. I chased down the watermelon as fast as a quarterback-well, I’m probably overstating my brilliance but you get the idea.

The whole incident happened so fast and, as coincidence would have it, just as I dove for the errant watermelon in the parking lot end zone, I bumped into someone I knew, a cashier from a bakery I frequent. He got a good laugh seeing disheveled me clinging to my ever so slightly large green stripped football. I was far too unnerved to be embarrassed but I can only imagine how I must have looked. The shopper watching my cart was indeed amused at the wild scenario that unfolded before her eyes. Of all the things one would expect to witness upon leaving a supermarket-a frazzled lady racing down the parking lot to save a watermelon. I thanked the shopper profusely and told her the first thought that came to my mind, “it takes a village to get out of Whole Foods.”

That was my Saturday. It felt good to know that in this crazy, fractured world there are still people willing to jump in and help a stranger without a second’s thought. So, thank you fellow Whole Foods shopper and please forgive me for not asking your name.


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