About tomatoes: I'm not sure why this comes to mind, but I remember checking out of Safeway once, with just one item, a tomato, just one tomato ~ we were making a couple of sandwiches, spouse await at home with bed o'bread, coutrements and serrated knife ~ and this particular tomato caught my eye on the cannonball stack and now here. I set it in the white weighing pan, and it sat in the corner. Smiling coyly. Head tipped; a little lean. When I lifted it out again, I felt our friendship had been cemented, and perhaps our affair noticed. Even still, when I placed it on the rolling expressway I took care to see nothing happened to it, don't get anything near it, no milk jugs or tippy pop-bottles nearby, no overweight women tossing items de-carto. I folded my arms, clamped my hands, but realized it was more stable upside down, less rolly, less tangentially targetable, so I turned it over carefully, and when I let go I got embarrassed, and smiled at myself and it. Then I realized looking down is not a private world, and I must maintain appearances around here whatever people think they're supposed to be it's a Safeway, it's a Safeway but it's NOT, and I looked up to see, and Elaine the checkout girl is looking at me.
Even though she was smiling a smile I can't describe, I had mixed up feelings when she reached over and picked up my very isolated, rubber-divider-bar protected tomato.
I usually stay home. |
