Le supermarché, c’est moi
On the luxury of life above a grocery store
Le supermarché, c’est moi
On the luxury of life above a grocery store
Gyan and I now live above a grocery store. I could get into the why and how of us ending up back in the Junction after a short stint in the Annex, but that’s not the point of this story. The point of this story is that living above a discount grocery store is a luxury so great, it would have given pause to Louis XIV at the height of Le Grand Siècle. The ability to get food and other supplies without ever having to step outside in a city that has been covered in snow, salt, and slush since mid-December is worth at least a couple of perfectly manicured, mirroring gardens.
I first realized the significance of our new location when, the morning after we’d moved in, a sleepy looking woman in her early twenties entered the elevator in her pajamas, holding onto a loaf of bread and a tub of yogurt. It took me several minutes to process the image of her brazenly uncovered haul, so raw to the world. I averted my eyes, I felt a little indecent looking at it directly. Within a few days of life in the new apartment, however, I discovered that while reaching the bathroom remained a box-riddled challenge, securing provisions was not. An entire world of produce, dairy, and toilet paper exists beyond an elevator descent and two taps of the key fob. The sweaty trips that tested my strength and endurance are a thing of the past. I can now shop for a single can of diced tomatoes and maybe a sprig of basil, feeling every bit the Milanese aristocrat, knowing full well I can come back tomorrow—hell, later that very afternoon—if anything is amiss.
My increasingly frequent trips to the grocery store have awakened a voyeuristic quality in me. I like to look at other people’s carts, try and guess their plans for their shops. I saw, for example, a man buying over a dozen bottles of olive oil and pictured massive vats of sauce and an entire family in hair nets, diligently canning and covered in splatters of red, the teenagers especially resentful. I get a kick out of seeing others’ guilty pleasures: salt and vinegar chips, day-old donut holes, KitKat bars. Guilty-pleasure shoppers are usually out just after work hours, and, visibly exhausted, only pick up what they will immediately enjoy on their couches, away from the city and its demands.
My favourite, I must admit, is when I get a glimpse into others’ dynamics. Just the other day, two gruff looking men in canvas jackets and sun-faded baseball caps were loudly complaining at one another. One half torqued a phone away from his ear, telling the other “She says it’s available at Foodland, where the fuck am I going to find a Foodland?” Where the fuck would he find a Foodland? I of course went home and searched for Foodland locations. His outrage was thoroughly justified.
It’s not always observation, I promise. Sometimes I get called into action, and I rise to the occasion with varying degrees of success. Because this is largely a Portuguese neighborhood, with some pockets of non-descript hipsters, standing at 167 centimeters I am basically a giantess. Once a week or so an elderly woman will ask me to reach something above the third shelf, and, feeling like the Big Friendly Giant, I bring it down and then relish what a good citizen I am for the rest of the afternoon.
Sometimes I am decidedly less helpful, like the time in the cracker aisle when a man held up his phone to my face. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, but it wasn’t the picture of a yellow box of Wheat Thins. Given that he wasn’t speaking, I outlined the cracker section with a hand gesture, and, noticing that the Wheat Thins were conspicuously missing, bent my arms at the elbow in pantomimed confusion. He dismissed me with a wave of his hand and walked off, leaving me to try and remember what colour shirts the staff at the store wear.
A few days later, it happened again. I was perusing protein bars for an alternative to our usual late-night snack, when a different man came up to me, holding up his phone with one hand, pointing at it with the other for emphasis. This time it was a bag of chocolate chips, and I was ready. I pointed him to the baking needs section, hooking my arm enough to indicate that he should go beyond this first aisle (soft drinks and chips) but not beyond, because he’d end up in coffee and spreads. It wasn’t until I was already in line for check-out that I noticed he’d gone straight into the beans and canned vegetables aisle. I winced and thought about that man all evening, and even more so when I later discovered that the chocolate chips were actually in a special promotional island, miles from baking needs.