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| This Kroger's on fiiiiiiiiire... |
Oh snap, you guys. I might have psychic powers. Or I might have learned how to manifest, a la The Secret. What I'm saying is, I might have accidentally burned down Murder Kroger with my mind.
I usually go grocery shopping on Saturdays. This Saturday was no different. I gathered my list, grabbed my purse, told Andy I was leaving. On my way out the door, I grabbed a bottle of Windex and some paper towels in a spontaneous burst of inspiration to clean the inside of my desperately smudged and streaked windshield. That led to me finally cleaning off dog slobber and nose prints from the cargo area, festering for the last 5 months since I took Charlie on a road trip to South Carolina.
All this time, Andy thought I had left for the store, so he was surprised to see me walk back in the house 10 minutes later. I go, "I'm back, store was closed!" And he's like, "Why? Somebody else get murdered there?" And I told him sarcastically that no, the store was on fire. So I turned around and came home.
I explained about the window cleaning diversion, and left for real. I ran to the art supply store to re-up my stash of supplies for making deranged-magazine-collage holiday cards. Then I finally arrived at Kroger and as I'm crossing the threshold of the store, the fire alarm starts going off.
At first, I question by sanity/sobriety. No one else seems to notice, nor give one single iota of a shit about the alarm. People in the produce section are just going on squeezing avocados, sizing up the girth of the cucumbers, living life unfazed as this alarm is blaring and emergency lights are flashing. I finally lock eyes with an older employee in the floral department and she gets it. She's looking around nervously and I'm like, "Should we be evacuating or...?"
At long last, someone gets on the intercom and tells everyone to evacuate.
I walk back to my car, thinking, wow, this is an exciting departure from my normal Saturday routine! But also wondering, did I somehow cause this? Did I manifest this? With my uninspired, offhand joke? As I'm standing back at my car and pondering these newfound powers I may or may not possess, an ambulance and two fire trucks come roaring into the parking lot. Then another fire truck. And two more. It feels like an episode of Sesame Street. The Count going "Four Fire Trucks, Ah-hah-hah! Now five, now six, now SEVEN Fire Trucks, Ah-hah-hah!"
At this point, I cut my losses and decide to drive up Gallatin Pike to the other Kroger, which is bigger and arguably better but also somehow worse because the layout of the store is reversed and I feel like I'm doing everything backwards when I shop there, and also their parking lot is stupidly designed, and it's necessary but not always possible to make a left out of their driveway to get home.
But I digress. On my way up Gallatin, traffic directly in front of me slows to a mysterious crawl. The lights ahead are green, the road appears empty, and yet the car in front of me in the right lane, and the cars beside me in the left lane: 10 miles an hour. It all becomes clear when the car ahead of me changes lanes, and I see that I am now following something that can't possibly be street legal. No insurance. No tags. Because it wasn't a car. It was a dog. With no tags. Or collar. But a dog, just trit-trotting down Gallatin Pike like he was late for an appointment. I put my hazards on and was just like, well I hope this guy turns right soon.
And before you judge me for not stopping in the road to help this dog, it was me or him in that scenario. One does not simply just STOP in the middle of Gallatin Pike, unless one is high on meth or otherwise does not care whether they live or die. Eventually, the dog did wise up and start running down the sidewalk, but after I passed him, I saw in my rearview that he ran back into the street. I don't know how that turned out, but godspeed, little dude.
Epilogue:
On Saturday evening, I found out via my good pal Mark Zuckerberg that the Kroger was never actually on fire, but a Frito Lay delivery guy hit a pipe and somehow caused the sprinkler system to flood the store? Who knows if any of that is accurate. Also, at some point shortly before or shortly after I was on the scene, there was a car flipped over in the middle of the street between the Kroger and the Aldi? In an area where you can maybe get your speed up to 15 mph between a stop sign and a traffic light?
I dunno, man. Bunch of savages in this town.
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I downloaded this app that is supposed to translate your cat's meows. Hadley never shuts up but as soon as I open this app she's all, "I refuse to speak without my lawyer present."
Look at these kids using the library! I bet back in the day when you could get rapped across the knuckles with a yardstick, these kids knew how to put a book back with the spine facing out, I'll tell you that much.
Analog Reading:
Still reading, but honestly losing interest in, Outlive by Peter Attia. It's getting a little into the weeds with medical jargon, and I'm just over here going, yes but please explain it like I'm five (going on 75). Tell me how to be old but not decrepit. That's all.
Also reading Gary Gulman's clever and moving memoir, Misfit. He writes with such precise, vivid detail and wit about events and feelings from his childhood. At first I was questioning whether it's even possible to remember such experiences with any degree of accuracy, but then I remembered that all my most vivid childhood memories are also the very worst moments. Could I describe what happened on any middling to good day in elementary school? Absolutely not. Could I narrate with fidelity a minute-by-minute rendering of every time I was embarrassed, disappointed, or misunderstood? Yes, right down to the weather, the outfit I was wearing, and what the teacher's gross coffee breath smelled like.
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