There are many modern circles of hell. They include the
Verizon store, waiting in line at the post office behind someone mailing all his
worldly goods to a country whose name contains no vowels, and discussing
current events with someone whose sole news source turns out to be Lindsay
Lohan’s Twitter feed. Oh right, there’s also going to the supermarket at the Jersey Shore.
Whoever came up with one of New Jersey’s former tourism
slogans---“New Jersey and You: Perfect Together” obviously never hung out at
the Acme in Cape May Court House. Yes, that’s really the name of the town,
though locals call it Court House. For all you folks who are fluent in Jersey,
that’s Exit 10 on the Parkway. There isn’t
much perfection in a shopping trip to Acme.
For starters, the parking lot is a poorly designed sea of
macadam and, in the summer anyway, more than a tad crowded. There are plenty of cars parked near the other
stores in the strip shopping center, so some folks apparently shop at those
places, too. Do people really go to that scary looking nail salon? Or to that excruciatingly bad Chinese
restaurant? Or to Fashion Bug Plus (And Then Some)? Apparently they do. Who knew?!
And because we’re at the shore, people in the parking lot are
eager, no, make that anxious, to get out of there and back to their rental to
start having real fun; like getting a sunburn, talking about playing
miniature golf but not actually doing it, and going to the liquor store for a
couple of handles of gin. Consequently, it takes more patience than I usually
have to find a spot in the midst of parking lot mayhem.
When you finally park, somewhere near Bayonne (Exit 14 on
the Turnpike), it doesn’t take long before you notice that you’re not in Happy
Valley anymore. Cars sport decals you
never see in State College. In State
College, it’s no surprise the vast majority of school decals on cars are about
Penn State. Sure, there is the occasional decal for an Ivy League school on
some upmarket ride like a Volvo, but Penn State rules the day. At the shore, you
see a wide variety of car decals such as: Barbizon School of Modeling, North
Carolina Institute of Taxidermy, and, of course, St. Fill-in-the-Blank Prep. There’s also the occasional bumper sticker
that says “My Daughter Is a Goth at Monrovia Junior High.”
Once you make it into the store, you see that the chaos in
the parking area was only foreshadowing of the chaos in Produce. And in the
Bakery. Not to mention in Snack Foods
(both sweet and salty). And everywhere else, too. Since almost everyone is a
tourist, no one knows where anything is and shoppers meander around willy-nilly
looking for a jar of capers or a box of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese dinner or an
inflatable orca (hint: it's in the mascara department).
But hey, if you want sushi, there are two Asian people, working
a little bamboo enclosure, and they’re wearing sushi uniforms so you know it’s
authentic sushi and not the Mrs. Paul’s version. It all seems vaguely, well,
culturally insensitive to me. I don’t know why the store manager didn’t make
them wear plastic buck teeth, super thick eye glasses, and Kamikaze scarves around
their foreheads. In for a penny, in for a pound, I always say.
The deli section is a gridlock of shopping carts as people
order stuff you’ve never heard of but want it sliced to tolerances worthy of
NASA. I’m often tempted to say, “Get a
grip, lady. It’s just pimento loaf, not the heat shield on the Mars Lander.”
But hey, if you want pork roll, they’ve got it. Pork roll is the key ingredient in a Jersey Breakfast, which, contrary to popular belief is not a cigarette, a wad
of gum, and a WaWa coffee.
When you’ve had all the fun you can take and it’s time to
check out, you do the standard line roulette, hoping to get out before you become
eligible for Social Security. If you’re
as lucky as I was the other day, your wait will be brief and you’ll meet the
team of Cashier Marcia and Bag Boy Patrick. I should warn you, there is the issue of her
hairdo. Or hair don’t as they said in Hairspray.
It’s sort of a Julius Caesar meets Betty Boop. My first thought was, "My God, don't you own a mirror?" Even by the low standards of
community theater costume drama, it’s bad. And then on second look I wondered what was worse,
her hair or her teeth, since regular dental care and fluoridated water have
obviously not been a part of her life for quite some time. As I stood there pondering this conundrum
it hits me that her worst feature isn’t her hair, or even her teeth: it’s her disposition. She’s like a bear with a
sore ass. No amount of pleasantries, jolly banter, chit chat, or even the
occasional bon mot is going to move her needle from the “I’m tired, my feet
hurt, and I’m missing The Price is Right”
reading on the deportment meter.
Bag Boy Patrick is, however, the good cop to Marcia’s Joe Friday suffering from hemorrhoids and a nicotine fit. He says hello. He smiles.
He packs my L.L. Bean tote quickly and carefully. I want to nominate him for
Employee of the Month. If this were the
movies, Cashier Marcia, playing Dorothy Brock, would twist her ankle trying to
scan a runaway watermelon and Bag Boy Patrick, in the Peggy Sawyer role, would
go out there a bag boy but come back a star, I mean, cashier. But alas and alack, it’s real life. And I
can’t daydream too much as Bag Boy Patrick loads my groceries into my cart.
If I do, I won’t have time to hotfoot it out of there to get my starter sunburn, then consider and ultimately dismiss the idea of miniature golf, and finally dash over to
the liquor store before some tourist buys all the gin in town.
That inflatable orca does have enviable lashes.
ReplyDeleteIt's probably the State Inflatable Beach Toy of New Jersey.
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