Pickled Herring in Light Salted Sour Cream Sauce
Posted by in STORY-001 onThere are about a million things that people have to do as a routine part of their lives in order to survive in the world we've created for ourselves. I mostly hate all of them. I hate filling out tax forms and keeping track of receipts, I hate folding laundry and I hate paying bills, I hate filling out little forms where I have to answer an endless amount of questions that are all asking the same thing as the one previous. I hate having to memorize a government issued number and I hate being put on hold when I'm trying to figure out about when the next time I have to go get new blood work done is.
Despite hating all of these things though I can usually find at least one thing that is likable about each of them so that I can somehow get through them without completely having a panic attack. For instance when I'm on hold I usually try to come up with fake names and meanings for all the songs they play while I'm waiting on the phone.
But when it comes to grocery shopping, I just can't take it. I don't know if it's the ugly packaging, the crappy music, the zillions of people who don't know how to move their carts to the side while browsing to let other people get by, or the employees who understandably hate their jobs and take it out on me when I ask them for help, but every time I set foot in a grocery store, I begin to feel physically ill.
Today I had to go grocery shopping for my great great cousin who is 84 and nearly blind. I help him often, I come over at least twice a week for at least four house. I helped him with a lot of things that I listed above today in fact, I folded his laundry and I helped him fill out his taxes and I even called the hospital for him and waiting patiently on hold to find out when his next eye doctor meeting was.
Anyway, every time I go grocery shopping for him he makes me this list that takes up at least four pages, half of the reason it takes up so much space is because I think he forgets sometimes that I still have my vision so he right REALLY big, but also, every time he makes a list, he's preparing for the apocalypse. (Mind you I get him groceries every other monday.) Today he had me buy four packs of 24 pack toilet paper rolls. I bought 30 bagles and 8 bags of family sized chips and they all needed to be Lays and they ALL needed to be a different flavor. He is adamant against all things not name brand even if they are less than half the price of what he listed. He hates all things organic even when they taste the same and cost the same. When I leave after putting away all his groceries to go home he takes every single item out of his fridge and examines it under this super CCTV that he has that magnifies things up to ten times the size and if he sees the word "organic" or "shopright" anywhere he calls me up and complains. He also asks for things that no one has ever heard of, today he had listed "pickled herring in light salted sour cream sauce VITA BRAND NAME it has a blue label and is in a plastic bottle" I nearly vomited, I didn't think real people ate those things. He asked for four large bottles of hazelnut creamer like he does every single time I go shopping and somehow he manages to use it all before the next time I get there, I suspect he drinks it out of a mug like orange juice several times a day.
He asked me to get him four pounds of liverwurst. Liverwurst by the way is the most poorly named product in the history of foods. I waited in line with a stupid little number in the deli section of shoprite for nearly 45 minutes. I suppose it seems dramatic but it's also true, that while i was standing their next to those dozens of old people waiting for their sliced up meats I felt like I was actively dying. I know it is mean to say but some of those people looked like they are decaying even as they are standing there in front of me, they looked like they were falling apart right in front of my face. Everything in my body was telling me that I needed to leave that store right away, that I needed to friggen lean all the groceries in the cart and make a break for it because it was a beautiful day today, it was in the 60's and those grocery stores look like prisons, they look like 70's era public schools. Something about being in grocery stores makes me feel like I'm shaving years off my life, it was the worst part of my day.
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Despite hating all of these things though I can usually find at least one thing that is likable about each of them so that I can somehow get through them without completely having a panic attack. For instance when I'm on hold I usually try to come up with fake names and meanings for all the songs they play while I'm waiting on the phone.
But when it comes to grocery shopping, I just can't take it. I don't know if it's the ugly packaging, the crappy music, the zillions of people who don't know how to move their carts to the side while browsing to let other people get by, or the employees who understandably hate their jobs and take it out on me when I ask them for help, but every time I set foot in a grocery store, I begin to feel physically ill.
Today I had to go grocery shopping for my great great cousin who is 84 and nearly blind. I help him often, I come over at least twice a week for at least four house. I helped him with a lot of things that I listed above today in fact, I folded his laundry and I helped him fill out his taxes and I even called the hospital for him and waiting patiently on hold to find out when his next eye doctor meeting was.
Anyway, every time I go grocery shopping for him he makes me this list that takes up at least four pages, half of the reason it takes up so much space is because I think he forgets sometimes that I still have my vision so he right REALLY big, but also, every time he makes a list, he's preparing for the apocalypse. (Mind you I get him groceries every other monday.) Today he had me buy four packs of 24 pack toilet paper rolls. I bought 30 bagles and 8 bags of family sized chips and they all needed to be Lays and they ALL needed to be a different flavor. He is adamant against all things not name brand even if they are less than half the price of what he listed. He hates all things organic even when they taste the same and cost the same. When I leave after putting away all his groceries to go home he takes every single item out of his fridge and examines it under this super CCTV that he has that magnifies things up to ten times the size and if he sees the word "organic" or "shopright" anywhere he calls me up and complains. He also asks for things that no one has ever heard of, today he had listed "pickled herring in light salted sour cream sauce VITA BRAND NAME it has a blue label and is in a plastic bottle" I nearly vomited, I didn't think real people ate those things. He asked for four large bottles of hazelnut creamer like he does every single time I go shopping and somehow he manages to use it all before the next time I get there, I suspect he drinks it out of a mug like orange juice several times a day.
He asked me to get him four pounds of liverwurst. Liverwurst by the way is the most poorly named product in the history of foods. I waited in line with a stupid little number in the deli section of shoprite for nearly 45 minutes. I suppose it seems dramatic but it's also true, that while i was standing their next to those dozens of old people waiting for their sliced up meats I felt like I was actively dying. I know it is mean to say but some of those people looked like they are decaying even as they are standing there in front of me, they looked like they were falling apart right in front of my face. Everything in my body was telling me that I needed to leave that store right away, that I needed to friggen lean all the groceries in the cart and make a break for it because it was a beautiful day today, it was in the 60's and those grocery stores look like prisons, they look like 70's era public schools. Something about being in grocery stores makes me feel like I'm shaving years off my life, it was the worst part of my day.
