Grocery List

The other day I was in the supermarket and spotted somebody’s grocery list lying on the dirty floor. It was in the gluten-free aisle. The paper was grimy with the tread marks of a hundred Sunday shoppers. Either the author had lost it by accident or tossed it away on purpose. All the items on the list had been scratched off, so whatever the case this document had served its purpose. Now it was just another piece of scrap paper, the words on it having outlived their usefulness. I rolled past it with my cart and got on with my shopping.

I was all the way back at the butcher counter—standing in line to get meat for our dogs—when I got to wondering if there might be something of interest written on the back on that list. Does that sound odd? Maybe I was hoping to find a stranger’s heartfelt communication scribbled there, a good old-fashioned billet-doux or a “Dear John” or a dark confession of some kind. Be assured that old letters have been re-purposed to far stranger ends than shopping lists. For example, one author I know keeps a stack of old letters in his bathroom and uses them in lieu of toilet paper. When asked, “Who are all those letters from?”, he replied: “My agent.”

The butcher handed me my order and I headed back to the gluten-free aisle. The list was still there on the floor. I picked it up. It was composed in a distinctive cursive script, of the sort they used to teach in the grammar schools of yesteryear. The writing brought back memories of going to the mailbox and finding envelopes addressed to me by hand. I don’t get many letters anymore. These days I’m lucky to receive even a well-composed email. The world, it seems, has moved on to more clipped and furious forms of communication. It’s all texts and tweets and vulgar gestures. I have many literary friends, and most of them are too busy maintaining their online “platforms” to waste time on leisurely, belletristic chitchat. That’s okay, I guess. Our most significant contact with others still requires no words. Even so, I miss going out to the mailbox and being greeted with the longhand of a faraway friend.

To resume, I scrutinized the soiled slip of paper. I began to read it. That’s when the everyday magic kicked in—the same magic that happens whenever you read something, whether it be a poem, a traffic summons, or a newspaper column. Reading is a form of enchantment, an act of imagination that transports the reader to a realm elsewhere. We often forget this fact, so commonplace is the act of reading in a literate society. In the crucible of my imagination, the words I read on that grocery list opened a great big window into somebody else’s world. And there I was, standing in the supermarket while at the same time peering into a stranger’s dim and cramped kitchen.

My vision wandered over the scene. I could make out vintage Bakelite countertops soiled with a half century of culinary regret. In the dim recesses of the room stood an old Frigidaire, a groaning tombstone to mark the final resting place of all things fresh and wholesome. On the ceiling was an antique fluorescent light casting a garish blue glow over everything, demoralizing whatever ghosts dared haunt the place. And right there in the center of the kitchen was a battered Formica top table, strewn with all the items on the salvaged grocery list:

–3 cans clams

–Bread Crumbs

—2 Milks 1 Milk

–Box vanilla almond cereal

–2 Boxes Wafles [sic]

–2 lb Box Sugar

–Lipton Instant Tea—30 qts [!]

–Choc pudding

–1 Reg Decafe [sic] Coffee

–1 Pepsi –Soup [huh?]

–Instant [word illegible]

–Small napkins

–Kleenex

–Cetaphil Cleanser

–Bon Ami powder

As I contemplated this wayward figment, I felt more and more like an intruder, a trespasser upon an American dream that did not belong to me. When I heard footsteps approaching the kitchen from an adjoining hallway, I knew it was time to go. I did not want to be caught here.

I fled the scene by turning the grocery list over in my hands to see what might be on the back, still hoping to find that love letter, or maybe a sonnet or even a pleasant “wish you were here” postcard greeting—something, anything, that might provide a more cordial glimpse into the soul of a fellow shopper. The back of the list was marked only with the scuffs of a throttling world.

I dropped the note back on the floor where I found it and hurried off to finish my shopping. In the midst of a flight of fancy evoked by an orphan grocery list, I had lost my own. Maybe I dropped it by accident when I was picking up meat for our dogs. As a lifelong vegetarian, I’m always discombobulated when I stand in line for the butcher. Anyhow, I finished my shopping and headed home.

Later, as I was unloading the grocery bags and putting away the quinoa, beans, and oatmeal, the soymilk, hamburgers, and hot dogs, I got the weird feeling that I was being watched. I looked up and thought I saw someone. Was that you?
©John P. O’Grady
Originally appeared in The Mountain Eagle on January 22, 2021