The gestalt happened in the aisle with the pasta and sauces. I was trying to decide which pasta sauce to select, always an irritatingly slow and deliberate shopper. As I stood there, deciding and weighing the pros and cons of various products, two college guys walked into the aisle and stopped almost directly behind me, talking. One held a shopping basket with toilet paper in it.
“Here, hold the basket.”
“It’s your stuff.”
“No, hold it. I don’t want to be seen holding it if some hot chick were around.”
If some hot chick were around.
I appreciated the moment as only a rather mousy, life-long wallflower can.
In case a hot chick was around, the toilet paper in the shopping basket would be a detriment. However, if some decrepit 32-year-old were around, it would be fine.
Though I’ve never thought of myself as hot, I did assume I existed. Not that I want to exist for everyone — who needs that burden? — but it just struck me as oddly funny that I didn’t happen to exist at that moment for that category. It was the answer, I suppose, to the question I think we all wonder secretly: who am I to other people? My friend’s father had it right when he said that we’d probably all be offended if we realized how little other people were thinking of us, particularly since the driving force for stupidity in humanity is the concern over what others will think.
All this, in front of Newman’s Own Tomato and Garlic sauce. I continued looking at the jars of sauce. They walked on, fighting over who would be seen with the toilet paper. I watched them walk away, feeling tangibly that I was getting old.
Someday you are going to find yourself old and decrepit, around age 32, standing in the pasta aisle, your metabolism down and your blood pressure up, your knees too straight and your back too bent, your hair thinning and your waist thickening. You’ll be contemplating sodium content vs. price vs. quantity and suddenly two sweet young things will walk by, not seeing you at all even though you sucked your gut in and thought of your frat days. And then you’ll get it; then you’ll get what it is to be invisible even though the blood still runs hot in your veins as much as it ever did.
I purchased an additional jar of marinara. Low sodium. Good price.
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