Spring Panic Shop

March 12, 2020 was a wonderful day to panic shop. Since the 13th would fall on a Friday, nobody wanted to take THAT risk when it came time to break quarantine and as we now know, tomorrow will be more infectious than today.

As a former Rochesterians, we are familiar with panic shopping due to upstate New York's recurrent blizzard conditions and or false warnings of upcoming fake blizzards. Over the past 50 years Rochester, due in part to a combination of complacency and panic, has witnessed the decline of both Xerox and Kodak (both onveniently available on your phone or office) along with the simultaneous rise of Wegman's our once local, Mom and Pop grocery that has become a national super grocery chain of best places to work in America.

We have no Wegman's yet in Southern North Carolina but up further North in Raleigh a Wegman's opened a few months ago with accompanying fanfare and mania.

The closest we come to Wegman's in the Charlotte area is an outfit called Harris-Teeter where we went to shop yesterday in the midst of the Corona outbreak/toilet paper shortage. The parking lot was full which isn't surprising because Harris-Teeter is in the middle of a hmmm Mall? no....plaza? no....shopping center? mmm okay. Shopping center. Who could tell that the overwhelming majority of the cars had contained folks who were heading to Teeters and or the neighboring liquor store.

Thiat overwhelming majority having finished shopping (and not finding toilet paper) congealed at the cashout lanes. While waiting in line, Lynn told me that the line we were in was the longest line in which she had EVER waited at any grocery store during ANY panic spree.

I made myself useful by locating a somewhat smaller line and standing in it without groceries. People were chatting amiably in the line in which I stood and when they offered me the chance to step in front of them due to the fact that I had no groceries, I confessed that I was holding a place for my wife who was in a far distant line. The woman and the couple in front of me said that it was a "smart idea" and that I was being a "good husband". As I stood in line, I perused a special magazine commemorating the James Bond series of films. I came to realize that I had seen the first 17 movies in the franchise and that young Connery was the best of the Bonds. When the line seemd to be shorter than the line that Lynn was standing in, I signalled her to come up and join us which she did and when my suppoters told her what a "good husband" I was, she just laughed and said, "that remains to be seen, it's only been 30 years and this is one of his brighter moments."

Earlier, while spacing out in the line I noticed that nobody was wearing a surgical mask which meant that it wasn't 1918 yet. I began wondering if two moths from now in a similar situation, everybdoy wouyld be wearing surgical masks and how depressing that would be and how depression would only add to the contagion. What if instead of surgical masks, everybody wore Halloween masks instead. I started thinking what a different vibe it would be if uplifting/humorous masks were protecting our faces when we were forced into community contact. I ruled out political masks or zombie masks and came up with a list of 12 masks that might fit into the situation; 1) ape mask 2) pug mask 3)shark mask 4) winking tongue out emoticon mask 5) Crash test dummy mask 6) banana mask 7) big eyed cat mask 8) Fred Flintstone mask 9) Einstein mask 10) bowling pin mask !1) Yoda mask 12) Alice Cooper mask.

I magined that a spat between a bowling pin and a big eyed cat over a roll of toilet paper would be as hilarious as it would be acrimonius.

That's when, exhausted, I picked up the James Bond commemorative and added a 13th mask 13) Connery as Bond...James Bond.

We made it to the front of the line and checked out and began a wonderful day of quarantine with plenty of toilet paper and a case of Corona beer.