Let Me Tell You Of The Story
From the outside, it looks much as it has looked for decades, my old, familiar grocery store.
But once I go inside, Oh, My! One-way aisles. The COVID lockdown has robbed me of my grocery store.
I am a creature of routine. I go first to my left, to the cheeses. I like stinky sharp provolone, four ounces at a time, as a bedtime snack. I buy several half-moon slices of the cheese as my first stop, lest I forget.
But now, I cannot go straight down the first aisle, then turn left. I must turn sharp left BEFORE the first aisle, and then turn sharp right to get to the gourmet cheese case.
All that turning makes me dizzy.
I stutter-step. I pause. I stop.
The lady behind me bumps into me with her cart.
Last year, that lady would have smiled and said, “Sorry!” by way of apology.
This year’s masked Amazon of the Cartways no longer smiles. Heck, nobody smiles, or if they do, we can’t tell. Instead, the bump-me lady mutters something.
Hard of hearing, I reply, “Whaaaaat?”
“You stopped, dummy!” she retorts. That doesn’t work, because these days, half of what I “hear” is actually me reading lips. Her lips are hidden by her face mask.
“Whaaaat?” I say again, this time forcefully. This bellow makes my own mask balloon outward, pushing my exhausted breath out from the mask’s sides and top.
That fogs my glasses. Instead of moving forward, I stop again — and get bumped again.
Now, the Amazon of the Cartways and I are in each other’s faces. Social distancing be damned. She is just as confused as I am about how to get from the peener butter to the jelly aisle, so her temper is as short as is mine.
We yell at each other.
See what one-way grocery aisles have led to? And I am not even to the peener butter yet. I will never find the mayonnaise.
These days, I can always find the toilet paper aisle. I cannot find toilet paper, or paper towels, or napkins, but I can find the paper goods aisle with no trouble. It is that l-o-n-g aisle of empty shelves, its improvised signs fluttering sadly in the breeze: “Limit one package per customer.”
But there are no packages, just gray-white shelves with fluttering impromptu signs.
I do not wish to get sick from COVID-19.
I am already in high-risk groups. I have had cancer. Heart attacks. Emphysema. Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease.
Poor memory is another high-risk group. Why else would I have stopped dead still en route to the stinky cheese case? Poor memory makes me stop, which makes me get bumped, which makes me wail, “Whaaaaat?”, which gets the Amazon of the Cartways into panty-knot territory, which means we breathe on each other.
High risk.
I am also married.
By definition, that is high risk.
Husbands are inflicted with “honey-do” lists, as in ‘Honey, do this,” and “Honey, do that.”
My honey-do lists include going to the post office. My wife goes right past the post office when she goes to town. But she resents having to stand in line at the post office, observing social distancing, clutching a heavy package, a birthday present for a granddaughter.
“You go,” she says. “You hold that package. I don’t like to stand in line.”
She cheerfully stands in line during her 97 trips to Aldi’s each week (I exaggerate only slightly).
But at the post office?
“You go.”
C’mon, Dr. Anthony Fauci, our nation’s leading epidemiologist. C’mon, Paisan. Surely, in your 35 years of marriage and your 36 years as the Director of the Infectious Disease institute, you have discovered the connection between honey-do lists and high-risk COVID categories.
Let’s bring common sense into play here.
One-way grocery store aisles have nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with slowing the spread of the novel coronavirus.
How do I know?
I know the same way President Trump knows these things. People tell me. Many people tell me. People who are very respected tell me. One of those people is “Jim,” my friend “Jim.”
My gut also tells me, just as President Trump’s gut tells him about bleach and hydroxychloroquine and COVID and dying. Yep. Mix those toxins together, and swallow enough, and you will die.
I know.
I know where the sharp cheese case is. I know where the peener butter is. But how do I get from one to the other? Do I go from the Kendall Square station, and then change for Jamaica Plain? Or do I wait until I get to the Scollay Square station where, if I am lucky, my wife will hand me a sammich?
Or will I ever return? No, I’ll never return. I may ride forever on the carts of one-way.
I’m the man who never returned.
(Apologies to fans of the Kingston Trio, c. 1959.)
Denny Bonavita is a former editor at newspapers in DuBois and Warren. He lives near Brookville. Email: denny2319@windstream.net.