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a run for it. Then it stopped.

Exhaling slowly - in a purely Zen sort of way, of course - I regained my composure. Turning back to my buggy, I was startled by a rather stodgy looking woman in a motorized shopping cart, who had stopped right behind me.

"Oh" I said, chuckling nervously, my voice raising a full octave and taking two steps backward, "I'm sorry. I didn't see you there."

For what seemed like an eternity, she just stared at me - long enough for me to notice the tiny black hairs along her jaw line and above her upper lip. Her face was puffy and thick. Her cheeks were heavy with jowls and her eyes were hollow and dark. It could have just been the deep circles under her eyes, but, more likely the heavy black eye-liner smeared unevenly around her lashes.

Her hair was dyed a cheap, bar-whore red and was coarse and brittle from over processing. She wore a candy-apple red lipstick that clashed with her hair color and bled into the tiny wrinkles around her mouth. Judging from her angry scowl, I concluded that she likely hadn't heard about the grocery store being a happy place, with all the Zen, and the Chi and the Feng Shui stuff.

"Or worse yet," I thought. "I'm looking straight into the eyes of the Princess of Darkness, and she's misplaced her crown."

Then, abruptly, and without acknowledging me or my apology, she barked at me, in a punchy, scratchy voice, heavy with gravel,

"Is that lemon custard you just put in your buggy?"

"Huh? Wha.......? Uh, no? "I stammered, completely perplexed and somewhat defensive. "It's vanilla pudding."

"Are you sure? She asked, her badly outlined eyes narrowing into slits, her voice, heavy with suspicion.

"Cause I coulda swore that it was lemon custard you just put in there."

"Oh, no ma'am," I said, trying to diffuse the tension with politeness. "It's vanilla pudding. Would you like me to get you some custard?"

"Don't bother." She spit. "I done looked and there ain't any more. But, now I'm thinking I mighta missed a box and you got it in your cart!"

"No, ma'am, I promise. It's vanilla pudding. See?" I answered, reaching into my cart for the box.

By this time, I was becoming more than a little annoyed with the Princess of Darkness, sans her crown, and her complete lack of social graces and good humor. There was no mistaking it. She had clearly missed the memo about the Zen, the Chi and that other Feng-Shui crap.

"Who the heck does she think she is?" I grumbled to myself. "It's not my fault she blinded herself with her cheap eye-liner and

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