Stuck

On a Saturday morning I wake up, accidentally step on the dog and don't do anything except throw on my clothes and go to the grocery store. I was planning on a busy day of family activities and wanted to have the groceries under my belt. I pull into my parking space crooked, forget my cloth grocery bags and make a bee line for the entrance walking quickly in front of a moving car that honks its horn.

A kind looking woman with white hair points out that I am wheeling two grocery carts stuck together into the produce section. Embarrassed at my oversight, I quickly pull apart the two carts and step on her foot.

“I'm so sorry.”

She puts her hand on my arm and looks directly into my eyes until I pay attention.

“Pay attention,” she says kindly. “My foot is OK but pay attention.”

“OK,” I reply and dash off to the apples bumping into the person already standing in front of the apples.

“Sorry.”

I then proceed to bump into someone every time I stop to put something in my cart. It doesn't matter if five people are in front of the cheese or just one other person is in front of the cheese. Someone is going to be a magnet for my clumsiness. Sometimes they apologize to me. Some people whisper 'scuse me under their breath and move on as I head toward them for a collision. More dramatically, a woman is pushing a kiddie grocery cart with two small children in a red plastic car. My cart has a mind of its own thinking it is playing bumper cars with the children. No one is hurt. The children laugh. Their Mom glares at me.

“You're probably one of those people who feeds herself before she feeds a child. You don't know what it's like to put your self aside.”

“I have children of my own. Their older and demand my attention in a different way. I never eat first, really, unless the first piece of pie crumbles,” I say as she continues on with her assemblage of groceries and offspring.

I push my cart into the man in the grocery line who says “if I'm not mistaken, you're not watching we're your going.”

“Sorry, I did get up on the wrong side of the bed today.”

I take a step backwards and step on the toe of a woman standing behind me.

“I heard what you said. Hey, I often get up on the wrong side of the bed,” she elbows me too hard in the ribs.

I begin to feel panicky about getting home in time for my thirteen year old son's basketball game. Anachronistically, I hand my debit card to the cashier. Thinking I must be ancient or from a remote village, she points to the self serve slider. Hotness floods my face as I slide my card and almost can't remember my pin number. I feel light headed as I choose between paper and plastic because I left my bags in the car, decide where I want my receipt and walk, stopping briefly in front of someone not knowing whether to go right or left, out of the store to my car which has a note on the windshield.

“Hey. You don't know how to park, BITCH.”

There is a mark on the too close side of my unaligned car where my angry neighbor opened his door.

Driving the short distance back to our house goes OK as I looked forward to the basketball game. My son plays well and our team often wins. The worst thing that happens once I'm at the game is I drop my sweater off the bleachers onto someone's head.

The best part of the day happens at 6:00 pm when the game is over and my husband asks where we want to go out to eat? It's an unusually warm spring evening. Although I'm a bit worried about spending money on eating out, my son and I choose a restaurant with a sidewalk patio. Trying to sit down, I realize that I'm unable to pull my chair out from the table because it's stuck on the sidewalk. I squeeze in then move the chair this way and that way but I can't get it unstuck from the sidewalk. I slither out of my narrow space to go to the bathroom. When I return, I really tackle my chair..

“Is there a problem,” a woman accuses loudly. She's sitting at the opposite end of the table from a man directly in back of me standing next to his chair with his mouth open trying to form a word.

“He has a stutter,” his wife scolds. “Why are you bumping your chair into his chair?”

I feel young and naive even though we're probably both middle aged.

“I thought I was stuck on the sidewalk.”

“Can we now eat our dinner in peace.”

I hear a low giggle. The angry woman's husband is now smiling instead of trying to get a word out. A little burst of hysterical laughter escapes like the top of a volcano erupting. We both laugh until we can't breath. My son and husband also have a hearty chuckle.

“You're food is getting cold,” says the woman now more bewildered than angry.

I calm down. Two weeks later there is an ad in the newspaper for a local theater production of Death of a Salesman. The photo in the ad of the Willy Loman character is the man in the restaurant whose chair was stuck on my chair. “Stunning performance,” said the ad testimonial. All he could do in his real life was stutter and laugh.