Freaks and Leeks

I think the heat is getting to people—the last few days have been crazy-making hot—because I had strange interactions all day. This morning, I had to go to the local camping store to buy a bunch of hurricane-preparation gear in case Hurricane Bill makes landfall and a TV producer needs me to weigh in. I had actually popped by the store late yesterday, just to make sure it had everything on my list. (I didn't want to buy the stuff until I had my orders in writing.) All I can think is that the grouchy woman behind the counter, sitting on something low so that only the top half of her face was visible, must have overheard me yesterday, because as I was going down my list with the clerk, she interrupted me, barking, "We have everything on your list! We have it all!"

"Great!" I said in my fakest nice voice. "The thing is, I need help finding it." The store is jammed with merchandise, and there are at least 10 people who work there—and it's not as if they had anything better to do than assist me, as there were no customers because it was 9:30 a.m. on a Thursday.

"It's all downstairs!" she barked again. "Go downstairs!" Normally, faced with such a harridan, I'd say something nasty and leave, but I couldn't because (a) I don't even know where another camping store is, and like I said, it's hot; and (b) I'm starting a website about my neighborhood, and I can't walk around zinging people if I want them to read/advertise/etc. The situation reminded of how, in my last job, I felt like I had to be nice to people more than I wanted to—this may come as a surprise to some of them—and I hated it. Who wants to be up against a wall like that? In any event, when I came back upstairs, she was relatively pleasant (it helped when I said I was buying the stuff for a potential TV segment). Deciding that she's just a social misfit, I found room in my heart to pity her.

This afternoon, I went to Whole Foods to buy ingredients for dinner: tarragon, a lemon, a leek, French green lentils—that's how we roll—and prosciutto. I was at the register, trying to unzip my shopping bag that stuffs into a pouch that resembles a hand grenade. (Someday I'm going to end up pressed against a police car.) I had just had an iced coffee, so I was laser-focused on unsticking the goddamn zipper when the cashier said, "There's a leak."

"Yeah, it's a leek," I said dismissively, having confounded cashiers before with esoteric vegetalia.

She froze, so I looked up at her, and then followed her gaze downward. The bag of lentils had a hole in it, and some lentils had dribbled out. They had leaked onto the leek, to be precise. We looked at each other and, realizing the miscommunication, laughed harder than the moment probably called for. And then she gave me a discount on the lentils.

On the way from the store to a bakery, where I had a rendezvous with a shameless chocolate-chip cookie, a woman stopped me to ask where the Whole Foods is. (I get asked for directions at least once a day, usually twice. I think it's the glasses.) I told her it's right around the corner, and she yelled, wide-eyed, "If it was a snake it woulda bit me!" I know I've heard the phrase before, but never applied to a grocery store.

Next, at the bakery, as I approached the cashier with my cookie in its little white bag, she said, "Cookie?" I looked at her quizzically. How did she know? She explained that the light was hitting the bag in such a way that she could see a cookie inside. I told her that I was worried that she recognized me as a frequent purchaser of cookies—and I've tried to be so good!—but she said no, that wasn't the case at all. And we shared a small laugh. No discount, though.

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