by C.E. Evans

Created on: May 30, 2008

I needed eggs and batteries. This was my mistake.

I'd been baking banana bread at home, when I discovered the lacking ingredient. The oven was pre-heated, dry ingredients had been combined with softened butter and mashed bananas, when I realized the carton had been placed back into the refrigerator empty of its contents. Undoubtedly I had done this in my typical morning frenzy of trying to launch myself directly from bed and out the door. The batteries are for the kitchen radio that's been dead for a week, which I truly believe has been throwing me off my game when it comes to baking. Plus, I have a really hard time going to the grocery store for one stinking item.

I drive a few blocks to the store, navigate the ever perilous parking lot, and make my way inside. The periodical advertises a "Truckload Fish Sale" today, which I always find a bit disheartening, living in the Midwest as I do. Where did this truck come from, and how long have these fish been on it? Apparently others do not feel the same way, as I enter the store and steer through the masses with their carts at odd angles, picking over the Sockeye Salmon and bulk shrimp.

At the refrigerated section I grab a carton marked "One Dozen Jumbo", find my batteries on an aisle end cap, and make my way to the checkout. I survey my options: a woman with what looked like an entire Thanksgiving Dinner in her cart, a man unloading items from a basket on his arm, or a young mother trying to wrangle a small child and a baby while simultaneously talking into her cell phone and unloading items onto the rolling belt.

I step in line behind the man with the basket, and after glancing at his purchases moving slowly toward the cashier, note that he is trusting of truckload fish. "Shoot", he mutters looking first at the teenaged girl ringing his purchases, and then me, "I forgot the lemons. Be right back! I hope you don't mind." But before I have time to respond he is trotting toward the produce. The cashier sighs, rolls her eyes in no one's general direction, and continues ringing the purchases on the belt. I shift my weight to the other foot, when my eye meets the googly, frozen stare of a whole halibut making its way toward the bagging area. Inwardly I cringe, while outwardly I feebly smile at the apathetic checker, and step out of line.

I file in a couple of rows over, behind the mother of two. She pries a chocolate bar from the sticky fingers of her young daughter, whose blonde ringlets spring wildly in various directions.

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