I should really take the summer off. Between kids home on holiday, a new garden to expand and now last-minute wedding details, there simply isn't enough time in the day to keep abreast of what goes on in the world around me.
Of course, that is also when all the really interesting stuff goes on, so as for taking the summer off -- fat chance!
I did have an interesting weekend though. Not the least of which is because I had a truly enlightening experience, completely unexpectedly, on what was supposed to be a routine trip to the grocery store.
I know what you're thinking...how interesting could that be? Well let me tell you, it was something along the lines of that moment when Neo woke up from the machine-induced delusion and realized that the world really was a sickeningly depressing, soul-crushing place of madness -- your worst nightmare in true-to-life technicolour.
Just like that. But worse.
It started with a little league game in Oakville, a trendy little yuppie-burg outside of Toronto -- just like the obnoxious eco-chic neighbourhoods of Toronto, but with bigger yards and bigger cars.
That's not the nightmare part...or at least the little league game wasn't. That was awesome! I only mention it because that is why we were where we were, in the heart of pretentious madness-ville, where we were forced by time constraints and urgent need, to make the choice we did.
We were hosting guests for dinner that evening and were in need of some last minute supplies, to fulfill my menu plans. We also had an important appointment that could not be rescheduled and a mad dash to make afterward, to get home in time to start dinner and be ready when our guests arrived. So, the miniscule grocery list needed to be filled at the closest, most convenient location between the little league game and our appointment, with less than an hour to do so.
Now, down the street from the field was a Whole Foods Market. I have never been in one before -- they have only just begun to sprout up in the trendier enclaves where people treat the word "organic" as if it is a religious requirement for the sacrament of supper. I have generally avoided this grocery chain, mostly due to it's reputation for being very expensive and the everyday challenge I already face, meeting the grocery needs of 8 people on a restricted budget.
Mikey and I skeptically eyed the Whole Foods and decided between us that the 6 or 7 items we needed would surely not bankrupt us and that the convenience of the location would more than make up for the eco-tax charged at the till.
It's not very often we are both so wrong about something so fundamental but inflated prices, it would seem, are not the only -- or even the best -- reason to avoid the Whole Foods like it were an Ebola-plagued African.
So very wrong indeed.
To those of you who are familiar with what I am about to tell you, and are in remission from the experience, I apologize for any emotional harm caused by forcing you to relive it. The harshest form of post-traumatic stress disorder can't begin to touch the searing mental flagellation of stepping through the automated doors of this Bedlam.
Firstly, the small line of shopping carts, conveniently located just inside the door, is deceptive. Although it appears to be smaller than an average shopping cart, the aisles you are meant to navigate through are so narrow and oddly angled, that pushing one from one end to the other requires not just a skill of precision unknown outside of a laparoscopic surgery theatre, but also the absence of any other shoppers or, for that matter, oxygen. Not since my first pair of PVC pants, have I been forced to squeeze so tightly. What is obvious is that you are not meant to use the carts and to be fair I suppose most of the customers of this particular establishment likely don't need to. It's hard to fill even a small cart with groceries, when all you're feeding is your organically pious vegan self and your purse dog...and perhaps your indeterminate-gendered "partner".
But I digress...
Once we (and by which I mean Mikey) got the hang of trundling through the aisles, the next challenge presented itself...
Did you know you could buy bison steak at Whole Foods? Not just bison steak, but bison burgers and assorted bison innerds, on top of the usual organic, non-steroid-injected, grass-fed assorted meats. Actually, it was a surprisingly diverse assortment of meats for a store that seems to cater more to a crowd of grass-feds themselves, but I am all for diversity! Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Which is why the next revelation came as such a shock.
As we weaved back and forth among the bison steaks, the non-pasturized milk and locally grown arugula, one thing was distressingly absent...Coke. No Coke. No ginger ale. No pop whatsoever. Not even a pop aisle.
And no chips, either. Unless what you're looking for is locally produced, organic corn tortilla chips in every colour of the rainbow. That's the chip aisle.
No check mark beside those items on the list. Move on to the next items...surely a place which offers bison steaks, has phyllo pastry and cream cheese..?! Nope. No phyllo pastry. None. Not even the organically produced, eco-blessed, exhorbitantly priced kind.
I scoured the shelves for cream cheese but came up short. At which point, I approached the thoroughly miserable looking woman behind the cheese counter, to ask for guidance. Whoever told you that eco-consciousness and "organic" life make you happy, lied, LIED, LIED! With a hearty look of full-on leftard derision, she silently lead me to the last shelf I looked on and pointed out a 2-foot span at which the cream cheese could be located, but do you think I saw the word Philadelphia anywhere?! Don't be preposterous! We don't carry that common filth at our sacred trough! You must purchase the 200 gram portion of "organic" locally produced goat's milk cream cheese for the value-added price of $8.99!!!
I probably could have been arrested for the look I gave the miserable cow, but she didn't pause in her silent pretentious haughtiness to register that my inquiry was more than a socially-generated construct within her existential reality. Back to the counter she went, without a word spoken.
I had no better luck with anything else on my list, but I did manage to treat myself to a pricey bouquet of locally-grown Gerbera Daisies, in a lovely shade of Tangerine, to adorn my dinner table. Too bad we couldn't eat them. But perhaps what I assumed as the Floral Department, was really Produce. Who knows?
So, with an overwhelming sense of crushing defeat, having wasted precious unwasteable moments, and a list of items still to be acquired elsewhere, I slipped past the pasty-white stick figures in line at the checkout -- with their "recycled" "organic" "paper" grocery bags and bike helmets -- and emerged into the parking lot with an indescribable frustrated rage that took all my will to not vent on the Lexus convertible sports coup in the handicap space outside.
Between the miniscule food portions, the absurd prices, the notable absence of anything which may contain white sugar and the palpable sense of contempt for anyone not fully steeped in the eco-guilt that compels whole swathes of the population to live in a state of austere meagerness, I was faced with the realization that there is actually a market for a place such as this. Ever more disturbing, that market is growing.
Dare I hope that, since these people never have any babies, one day all of them -- and their purse dogs -- will be gone and with them, the Bizarro universe that is the Whole Foods Market?
Maybe so. Until then though, I will live and sleep in fear that the world I always thought I knew has suddenly and, without explanation or warning, turned itself inside-out and given itself over to the madness and chaos of anti-space.
Whole Foods *scoff*. Whole lotta nothin'.
