Im standing in the produce section on a Thursday evening, having made it only about 15 feet past the co-op's entrance, and am anxiously running over my roughly 6,300 options while my right hand drifts slowly back and forth over a bin of apples, like one of those metal detectors employed by elderly men at the beach. I have, through practice, learned to handle most of the grocery store without too much trouble, largely by buying the same 20 or so items each week while being careful not to overturn shelves of bee pollen or whole wheat ginger snaps as I zip between my chosen brands of breakfast cereal and tortilla chips in as straight a line as possible.'""
This trick works less well in produce, however, where I am now face-to-face with over 500 red-green Braeburns, all of them subtly differentiated by size, shape, color, firmness, complexion, luminescence and visible bruising, but without any clear system for weighing these qualities against each other. Paralyzed by the threat of inadvertently selecting an inferior piece of fruit, I could spend the entire evening intently groping each and every apple like some kind of fruit aisle pervert. Rather than risk controversy, I decide to replace the two specimens I've been inspecting and push my empty cart on down to the tangelos.'""'""
These grocery store episodes are just one part of a final undergraduate semester that I've come to think of as a preview of old age. With the majority of my coursework finished and a social life suffering from the frustrating tendency of graduated friends to move away, most of my week is now defined by which errands I run on which days and by chance encounters with strangers, who have assumed prominent places in my day-to-day interactions.'""'""
""Do you know your way around this neighborhood?"" asked one man whom I passed on the way home from the grocery store. He seemed to be puzzling over a brochure the title of which I wasn't quite able to make out.'""
""Finally,"" he said, when I told him I was familiar with the area, ""nobody seems to know the way around."" He continued: ""By the way, I'm Walt. I just got here from Milwaukee because I got shot in the stomach,"" and then, in lieu of extending his hand, lifted up his coat and shirt to show me a partly-healed puncture wound in his lower abdomen. '""'""
I sensed that some kind of response would be appropriate, but my experience of etiquette stopped just short of explaining which. ""Gro-o-oss!"" I might have ventured had we both been 15 years old. But Walt was two or three times that age and didn't give the impression that he was seeking my morbid fascination. As at the grocery store, I was at a loss as to how to proceed, but unlike the produce aisle, I knew that I would not be allowed to stare silently at someone's abdomen for an indefinite period of time - bullet hole or not.'""'""
""Gee!"" I exclaimed, sounding not unlike how Wally Cleaver might have sounded in a similar situation. This seemed to be good enough for Walt, who lowered his coat and held up his brochure, pointing out a particular address, one that as far as I could tell, wasn't anywhere near downtown. After sharing this news, I wished him luck and resumed walking back home with grocery bags in both arms and the rest stuffed in my backpack.'""'""
Without the likely prospect of heading out again that evening, coming home is a much different affair, one that begins with looking around your living space and acknowledging, ""Well, this is it for the night.""'""'""
It's a change in perspective that prompts one to undertake various home improvement projects. The first of mine had been to stock the kitchen shelves with a few decent bottles of liquor, something I wouldn't be embarrassed to carry around in a glass while I stayed in to reorganize my bookshelf or winterproof the doors and windows. As for tonight, there was a living room that could be cleaned and a pile of mail to be sorted, but first I would take a moment to hang up my coat and relax before I began to sort groceries, pausing for just a moment to wonder aloud, ""Now where are the fucking apples?""
Like apples? Email Matt at hunziker@wisc.edu.
