Comedy of Errors

Yesterday I went to the grocery store in my neighborhood for the first time. I've been looking forward to this all week long. I imagined meeting the friendly clerk, with a thick accent, finding my items with ease, checking out and yelling back "See you next week!" to my new friend. Soon we'd wave to each other on the street and he'd invite me to have dinner with his delightful family and to see his children's plays at Junior High School 62. In my mind, this was the experience that my need for deli slices and fresh produce would eventually earn me.

I was wrong...

First of all, I went in the opposite direction of the grocery store when I left my apartment. So I ended up in a location (which I thought I recognized) that was quite sketchy. I walked into what I thought was the grocery store which my roommates called "really great". It had three aisles of canned food, a shelf stocked with gum and candy and a refrigerator full of sodas. A can of generic green beans was $1.09.

Yup...$1.09...generic green beans. See ya.

I attempted to shop. Soon enough I placed my items back on the shelf and walked out and back toward my apartment. Finally, I found the real store. The outside was charming with it's heaps of fruits and vegetables, the inside was a different story. It was a madhouse. Imagine a 10'x20' room, full of rows of unidentifiable canned items, a refrigerator full of more unidentifiable items, a stack of nuts, a row of fruits and vegetables (those were easily identified - but they could've put those outside with the rest of them...) and dead fish. All sorts and sizes. OH! and don't forget the random foods being pickled (including fish). Add in about 40 people and you've got my very first grocery shopping experience in Brooklyn! To add to strangeness of the experience, Latino music was blaring over the loud speaker. I'm serious. Only this kind of stuff happens to me...At one point I picked up an air-tight package of meat and asked the shop owner what it was. She pursed her lips, shut her eyes and growled "It's bacon..."

Don't give me that attitude! This is a predominately Jewish neighborhood!!!

I grabbed some apples, plums, a tomato, an onion and some "rice" and went home. I needed a nap, but I watched "Pushin' Daisies" online instead. Later I went roller skating with a friend from work. After the rink we went to a Dave & Buster's somewhere on Long Island. Very interesting characters those folks from L.I. One girl (who might have been 17) was wearing a black tube dress with a Burberry-patterned sash tied around her waist (I call it a sash, but it was really just a piece of cloth) and some red shoes that missed the fashion mark I think she was trying to hit. I watched her and her group of friends for a while. They were working hard to prove to the middle-aged D&B-ers that they were able to have as much fun as any person there - with or without a high school diploma. I remember being that age and feeling like I was mature and wise beyond my years. That label would've been true had I avoided doing a back flip from the bleachers (and busting my chin - 8 stitches!), inviting two football players in through my window in the middle of the night (don't worry, nothing happened. At the time I contended that they were just being funny, but now I realize I could've lost much more than sleep that night - thanks mom for bustin' that up. And for the record, there is no "non-embarrassing" way to do that, so to my friends with children, don't avoid confrontation for the sake of your child's reputation) and abusing my body to resemble a waif at prom. And while I can't identify with that group of girls in my fashion or entertainment choices, the mindset is familiar territory and I pray they make it out with just a few stitches and the memory of how skinny they were on prom night.