Fairway Note:
Your Happy Place, My Eye
22 March 2019
¶ On last Monday’s weekly food shop, I forgot to buy ginger ale. I forget something — a few things, usually — every week, but I can’t seem to keep a list these days, and ginger ale is still a rather new addition to my shopping cart. I must say that it is a good deal more satisfying as a distinctive dinner drink than I thought possible. If there’s a secret, it is that Canada Dry lives up to its label, and is not too sweet. In fact, I don’t think of it as sweet at all, although I’m sure that I’d miss the sugar if I tried to get by with club soda.
So I had to go to Fairway today, just to buy a six-pack of Canada Dry in a can. (Unlike Coca-Cola, it does not come in small glass bottles.) I had already been to Schaller & Weber, and was carrying, in addition to a medium-loaded shopping bag from that errand, my own tote (indistinguishable, but for the lack of cosmetics, from a woman’s purse). There were no shopping carts, and I rejected taking a hand basket, out of hands. Carrying the six-pack from the basement up to express check-out line was a pain, but holding onto while on line was maddening. Attached by plastic webbing of increasingly dubious tenacity, the cans were heavy and awkward. I was sure that the plastic would give way, sending cans rolling on the floor in all directions — and me back downstairs for another six-pack.
I got through without incident, however, or at any rate nothing worse than feeling silly about using a credit card to pay the four dollars. Then, having accomplished everything that I’d set out to do, I went home and sat down. But only for a little while. There was still PriceWise to visit, for what I’ll euphemize as “paper products.” I wondered vaguely if any of those products would have been developed if not for the demand, which came out of nowhere five hundred years ago, for cheaper books.