It was at this moment that I realized I am officially “different”

Grocery shopping how I have a love/hate relationship with you. First I love you because you provide food for me to eat. Eating is good, eating is necessary; eating is a way of life (literally). But at the same time I hate you because you force me to partake what can only be called the “adventure of shopping”. Shopping by my definition is supposed to be fun and relaxing and end with you going home with something pretty that makes your hips look amazingly slender. In an ironic turn of events, grocery shopping has the exact opposite effect on your hips. I think that they actually grow just by skirting past the ice cream aisle. Grocery shopping is what I like to call a “whipping”. Especially because I am forced to grocery shop at peak shopping times, which somehow coincides with the daily break times of all checkers, thereby creating an economic catastrophe of not enough supply to meet the demand. (See mom and dad that load of money you spent on my college education is showing its worth, both for the use of economic theory and my compound, complex sentence.) It also doesn’t help that I go grocery shopping while hungry so I am driven by the little voice in my stomach (which sounds an awful like cookie monster from sesame street) to purchase everything and anything that is in the line of sight of my cart.

Yesterday I succumbed and went shopping right at the pinnacle of disaster. It was 5:30 (hot shopping time for all us white, blue, green, purple, choose your own color–collar workers) and I was starving. Pulling into my local grocery store I scored prime parking for the time, only about 15 cars back but on a central aisle and right next to the shopping cart pen.

(It is now the point in the program where Katie pulls out her soap box: If you are one of those people who does not return your cart to the pen, but chooses to leave it wandering around the lot, or worse right next to my car which is parked in any adjacent slot, I hate you. Really I do and I curse your name as I walk your cart to the pen myself. You are lazy, really that is all it is, pure and simple laziness. Thank you, for listening to Katie’s soap box rant. We now return you to your normal programming.)

One thing I notice about grocery stores is that they always have music playing. Now back in the day when I worked at the Pig (Piggly Wiggly for you unenlightened who know of no such store) we had what could only be called muzak, really sad attempts at taking contemporary music and making it fully instrumental. My co-workers and I, all fun loving high school students (the Pig was THE place to work in high school), would make a game out of guessing the song. Well today they finally figured out that people like words with their music, especially if it is a rendering of a song that once had words but you removed the words because that might make it less contemporary and more grocery store or elevator friendly.

As I perused the crowded store with my strategic cart operating skills and cookie monster yelling at me every time I passed something that looked like it could be eaten at that exact moment, I found myself singing along to the soundtrack of this shopping endeavor.

My time spent in the fruit and veggies department was marked by the last half of “Ghostbusters”. I rather enjoyed singing along with that one, AND making the little do-do-do-do noises that accompany chorus. As I moved to get my bottled water, “Total Eclipse of the Heart” by Bonnie Tyler started up on the turntable and I really got into that one. I even think I might have closed my eyes at some point as I sang along and really “got into the song”. As I made my way to the cereal aisle what did my ears perk up to but “Wannabe” by the Spice Girls? This was the anthem of my all-girls floor my freshman year in college. Memories of us blasting it from every room and singing and dancing down the hallways came flooding back to my find. I’m proud to say I had the self-control to not dance my way down the cereal aisle but I did sing along (and by singing I really mean mouthing the words). I finished up in the frozen food aisle with “Can’t fight this feeling anymore” by REO Speedwagon where I lost all sense of shame and just let loose with the song. This is a good place to tell you that a few summers ago I went to a REO Speedwagon, Journey, Styx concert. Ahahaha, that was such a funny concert, not so much because of the bands but more the people there. Oh my goodness, talk about some interesting people watching.

For a shopping excursion, I think that might have been the perfect quadfecta of music. Now to all my musical elitist readers out there (you know who you are), don’t judge me. I like these songs, I know all the words to each of these songs, I sang along to every song, I might have even moved to the music to a few of them. In fact, nobody judge me. You can laugh, you can shake your head, you can think I’m “different” or “special”. You can even choose to never go grocery shopping with me for fear of how I might react to the play list of that certain store. But don’t judge, because I know you do the same thing. Oh you pretend to be all normal and not notice the music, you hide behind all your good taste in artists and whatnot, but you know that you get the urge to bop when “Ghostbusters” comes on, and you want to break into interpretative dance when you hear Bonnie belt out “Total Eclipse of the Heart”. And I know that as soon as “Wannabe” reaches your ears you have a desire to start speaking in a British accent and bouncing up and down in dance. And then the last, if not the best, you want to throw you head back, reach your arms out and do your best “emo” interpretation of “Can’t fight this feeling anymore”. You know you do the same thing as I do, just maybe not in the grocery store.

So yep, I’m a bit “different”. But at least I’m entertaining.