It's interesting to observe people in supermarkets.
There are the hard core coupon users. You might want a jar of peanut butter, but someone with a load of coupons has just wiped out the inventory. You don't want to get behind one at the checkout. After the clerk has swiped every item that came out of the cart and rendered a total, the couponer triumphantly hauls out a three-ring binder, fishes out a wad of coupons and grins like a possum with a mouthful of glue as the checker mindlessly swipes the bar code of each and every single one.
Once I saw a couponer haul out her book of coupons, drag out the ones she was going to use and drop them. They fell like confetti, and I cackled at her misfortune like I had no fear of karma coming back to get me. I also changed lanes.
Then there are the mothers on Valium (or bourbon). They have to be on some sort of substance if they can't hear the screaming children in and around their cart, their little sticky hands grabbing at everything within reach. They just blissfully push their cart up and down aisles as if in a trance.
The sorority sisters are the shoppers who apparently haven't seen each other since the price of gas was in two figures, and they have a reunion right there. In the middle of the aisle. And they are aware only of each other.
Then there's the family that shops together. Every purchase has to be discussed, analyzed, compared, argued about -- in the middle of the aisle. If you're not careful, they'll jump you if you try to get around them.
Most shoppers are in their own little world, a world that consists of a supermarket full of merchandise and no one else but the stocker and the checker. But the most social shoppers are the people who buy catfood.
People at the catfood aisle are courteous enough to move their carts away from blocking the Friskies while they're loading up with Fancy Feast. Cat people like to share stories about their cats while they're selecting cans of food. They're equally happy to listen to your stories about your own amazing felines. I've had conversations with total strangers who seemed like old buddies after we finished tossing cans into our carts.
I have never seen people in the dogfood aisle do this. People who create a cart jam at the yogurt case don't talk to each other, except maybe in the minds of those who must wait. Folks who buy frozen pizza don't even acknowledge each other at the freezer door.
Maybe young mothers in the babyfood section exchange information; I don't know. Maybe someone can enlighten me on that. I've also never seen shoppers comparing notes on laundry detergent or toilet tissue.
Hang around the catfood aisle once in a while, and see if I'm not right. You might even meet some interesting people. And I've never seen anyone holding up a checkout line while running through coupons for Meow Mix.
