I hadn't been grocery shopping in a while, since I usually eat out as much as possible to feel like a wasteful New Yorker, but I really wanted to get some Jello pudding pops, since they just came back on the market after a long and needless hiatus. Anything that can help bring me closer to the childhood that is slowly eroding away is of much importance to me. Well, I normally go to the Stop and Shop, but for some reason, as I was about to pull into the parking lot, I felt compelled to pull across two lanes and drive into the parking lot for Shop Rite, on the other side of the road. Maybe they could offer me a better produce selection and more discounts. What an adventure. Everything there was all backwards, and I wandered around for like an hour and a half before I found everything I wanted. But being in that new shopping environment made me feel slightly more emotionally vulnerable for some reason. I walked the aisles in a childlike daze, finding all sorts of unhealthy goodies with which to fill my shopping cart. I also found the precious pudding pops, and I let out a small "hooray!' when I saw them, after scouring the ice cream section. This chubby old Puerto Rican lady gave me a strange look and I just held the box in front of my chest and gave her a big goofy grin, as if I were posing for a magazine advertisement or something. I then skipped back to my shopping cart, clutching the box tightly. Maybe that elation made me slightly more sensitive to my surroundings for some reason, because I suddenly found myself extremely upset a few minutes later. I was rolling down the second frozen foods aisle, full of glee, when I laid eyes on a treacherous beast. Just awful. I couldn't stop myself from staring when I saw this monster slowly floating towards me. It was this big fat white lady with a ton of food in her cart, but more than half the food was meat. For some reason it just looked like the grossest thing I'd ever seen. So much red and blood and flesh color, all shrinkwrapped, and stacked on top of each other. Her cart was filled with hamburger meat, chickens, ribs, and a bunch of shit that I couldn't even identify..pig's knuckles or something? And of course there were tons of potato chips and bottles of coca cola in there too. My eyes started tearing up. I couldn't look away. The fat lady drew closer, lumbering behind her death-cart. I stood there trembling, staring at her, a tear rolling down my cheek. She stopped right next to me to get some frozen chicken wings, bending over, revealing her enormous ass, folds among folds. After placing the 100-count bag of chicken wings in her cart, she saw me staring at her, crying gently, and she asked me, rather sweetly actually, "Honey, what's wrong?" and I couldn't speak for a moment, then managed to croak "There's...there's like four chickens in there!" pointing to her cart, and then broke out crying, grabbing my cart and racing off. I was wiping the tears from my eyes and almost lost control of the cart, nearly slamming into a couple of little kids. Luckily I was calmed by the time I reached the cereal aisle, but not after returning the few meat products I had bought and replacing them with bocaburgers and tofu pups. I quickly purchased all of my groceries and left the Shop Rite, never to return again.

On my way home I stopped at McDonald's and got a Big Mac, then went home and ate four delicious Jello pudding pops.