A Few Minutes at Vons

Occasionally, when you’re very very scatterbrained and thoughts are playing ping pong in your head, simple things become extra hard tasks. Like your dad calls and wants you to pick up some parmesan cheese, and it takes you a while to say you’ll do it because you’re not sure it’s actually feasible at first. So you head to the store and dart for the cheese section. That area you remember choosing Lunchables in when you were little, and you see cheeses and cheeses but parmesan is absent. You think to yourself, people still use parmesan cheese. How can they not have it? This is Vons for crying out loud. They’re supposed to have things for typical family dinners. 

Then you spot a bag of freshly grated parmesan cheese. Suddenly it hits you: there are three kinds of parmesan cheese. There’s freshly grated, there’s the powdery kind in the canister and there’s the cheese block. What kind did dad want? He didn’t say. You have an inkling he wants the powdery kind, but think what he’d say if that wasn’t right. He would say he wanted the other kind but then brush it off like it’s no big deal, and that would make you feel like a pile of dog crap even though you had no way of knowing  and he wasn’t trying to make you feel bad. You decide calling him is the best bet. You knew it: powdery canister. Yet this food item is nowhere to be seen in this section. 

Why wouldn’t they put all the cheeses together, in one place? Nothing makes sense these days. You think of Diggory, the Pevensie kids’ uncle from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. He said something in that book about people having sense. You thought it was funny then, you remember it registered. It registers now as you saunter through aisles of cereal and kleenex. Something about people learning sense in school. “What do they teach in these schools, if not sense?” Something like that. 

Finally, you reach the pasta aisle. You suppose it took seeing the boxes of dry pasta to realize it almost makes sense to have Kraft powdery parmesan in this aisle. You reach for it and glance at the price tag: $8.99 for a canister. Since when did fake-ish cheese items become so expensive? They’ve changed the bottle. It’s see-through now. When you were a kid it was an opaque green canister, with a little sheen to it like a spearmint gum wrapper. You almost grab the cheaper imitation bottle for $6.99. In the end you choose Kraft brand for two more dollars, for old time’s sake. 

In line, it takes the clerk at 4 a couple tries to tell you she can ring you up at her register. You were busy staring at the chubby girl in San Diego Padres logo pajama pants, high as a kite. Someone says they like your umbrella. Did you say thanks? You have no idea. 

Walking out, you feel semi useful picking this item up. “They’ll have something to put on the pasta now,” you think, “because of me”. When you get into your car you burst into tears. You don’t feel useful anyway. 

Things can be tough when you’re scatterbrained.