Defensive Shopping

Like a lot of other people, it is often after dinner, after showers or just before bedtime that my children will inform me that they need something from the store. Sometimes it is something that they need the next day for school. Other times it is shampoo, shaving cream or razors. I have tried over and over again to remind them that if they place their requests on a running list in a central location, let's say the refrigerator, they can add items to the list before it becomes an urgent situation.

I have made many runs, at all hours of the day and night, to gather what they need or what I discover that we need in the house because somebody used the last can of dog food, ate the last of the cereal or any combination of household/family needs.

Although we no longer have a 24 hour supermarket or a 24 hour Home Depot, we do have a 24 hour Walgreens Pharmacy and multiple 24 hour 7-Elevens within a 2 mile radius of our house.

One of my recent evening runs was a 9PM run to 7-Eleven. The cashier greets me with a call out "you are here early tonight". The cashier of this particular 7-Eleven has seen me at 11PM, 2AM, and 4AM on other occasions thus a 9PM visited is certainly early.

I self-consciously smile realizing that every other patron in the store has heard this. I cannot even imagine what they are thinking of me as being so familiar that the cashier would say such, or if it is just part of the background noise of cell phone conversations and music from a local radio station piped throughout speakers in the store.

I gather my own purchases; a gallon of milk, cranberry lime drink, coconut M & Ms and sugar free pudding. The necessity that brings me here at this moment is the milk. The rest are impulse items. I take my place on line for the cashier. A young man holding a 12 pack of beer looks at me and says "It's been a long day". In front of him a man holding 2 pints of Ben & Jerry's ice-cream and a bag of dog food looks back at the younger man and says "My wife is pregnant".

I stand silent as their purchases are paid for and they leave the store. I pay for my own and as I walk out to my car hear a voice in my head asking why do purchases require a defense? Either man could easily, silently make his purchases and walk away without being gawked at or labeled as anything other than another consumer. As I pull out of the parking lot, I wonder were they even talking to me or one another or were they convincing themselves that they were justified to want the beer or the ice-cream; the dog food, I am convinced was really for a dog.