". . .but right now, in this Shaw's organic food aisle, one of them -- could be either the man or the woman -- hates their existence right now."
A lot of grad students live near Doberman and I, and they are fairly funny people to observe, actually. To preface this story, there's a shopping plaza near the house, with a bookstore and an Ace Hardware and a (fucking. . .) Radio Shack and a Dunkin Donuts (with chairs inside! (so you know it's classy)). And most relevant, there's a Shaw's in there, and that Shaw's charges painfully high prices, ostensibly forcing you to pay Whole Foods prices for Star Market merch, which is like being bludgeoned with an Alaskan King Crab while trying to shop at a Star Market. Fuck, whatever, we get the student discount at Ace Hardware because we show them a student ID from ages ago. The photo on the ID is just a little scary, because it looks like it's of an moonlighting EMT that only took the job because of an unhealthy desire to steal people's organs and store them in jars. It's an emphatically bad photograph. But we digress.
That Shaw's is the brick and mortar embodiment of submission. Basically, if there was a TV show about your life, this Shaw's would be where a lot of your 'Season 2' would take place. Your 'Hatch,' if you will. Imagine the scenario. Season 1, boy works job. Girl meets boy. They identify one another as "better than terrible and occasionally bearable." Then job fucks boy over. Girl plays mother, tries to fix boy -- and for the record, either of these things could be reversed, there are no gender roles in this hypothetical. Boy wants money, girl wants boy to get his shit together and get money. Boy applies to grad schools around the area, couple moves to this particular neighborhood that caters to the grad student lifestyle.
(But Ghost Little, you've written yourself into a corner, there is no 'grad-student lifestyle!' Very astute. Come in here boy, have a cigar, you're gonna go far!)
The couple is running out of money. They need food. They go to the Shaw's.
Oh, let the games begin!
Now, above all else, this couple is happy that they're with somebody, but right now, in this Shaw's organic food aisle, one of them -- could be either the man or the woman -- hates their existence right now. Dragging their aching feet down the organic food aisle, they've clearly just finished a run that only the other person wanted to go on, and picking a flavor of Annie's Mac & Cheese (which they really do like) is the last thing they want to be doing right now. They spite their significant other so much that it's funny, then sad, then funny again, like a cosine curve. And the chipper one, who wanted to go on a run and then go to the store and maybe hit up the RedBox, recognizes the contempt, compounding this congealed hilarity. S/he has to be doubly-peppy because his or her G/BF has given the fuck up. They're the walking dead. Their autopilot capabilities blur away from reality and now border science-fiction. If anybody ever came up to us and asked "what do you hate about modern relationships?" we could just point to one of those couples and say "well, pretty much that."
People that hate being at the store and fight every step of the way are missing the point. You're there on a covert mission to get in, buy your shit, and get out before Liquid Snake knows what the fuck happened. You know that it sucks, it always does, so why agonize over it? You'll just make trouble for your very existence.
-- Alex Crumb (originally published 11/18/10)
