Slowly dying while trapped in a Kroger parking lot
Feb. 11—With a small fortune in groceries in the backseat I threw my car into reverse and slowly began backing out of the parking space.
I'd made it all of 3 feet when a minivan stopped directly behind me.
"What are (bleep) you doing?" I asked the vehicle — possibly a Carnival or a Sienna, but I'm not ruling out the possibility of an Odyssey .
The answer, time revealed, was waiting on a lady two spaces down from mine to finish packing her groceries into the trunk of her mid-sized sedan and go on about her day. I assume the van's driver — it was likely a Dodge Caravan, now that I'm thinking about it — planned to swoop her land-boat into Lady Unloader's parking spot once she had finished the task at hand. This would minimize the walking distance between her vehicle and the grocery store itself.
Given that there was an open space two back from mine and four back from the one she was eying, I assumed Minnie Vanner had some condition which made walking either extraordinarily difficult or outright impossible. Perhaps an injury. Or a couple of missing legs.
The problem with the minivan driver's plan ... you know, besides its failing to account for fellow Kroger shoppers who may have already dropped the average cost of a dead grandmother's funeral on a week's worth of groceries and want nothing more than return home to determine which organs they'll need to harvest and sell to make ends meet ... is that the lady on which the plan hinged appeared to be in no great hurry to get her things packed up. Unlike your everyday grocery shopper, who is both drained from the workday and also disheartened from having to spend even a fraction of the few remaining hours before he passes out from sheer exhaustion wandering the aisles of Kroger, this lady appeared to be relishing the tedium of her task. As she pulled each plastic bag from the mountain of others in her cart, Lady Unloader carefully examined its contents as if she were both unsure and completely shocked by what she'd just purchased.
By my estimate — the calculations for which I ran while downing another wad of greasy tater wafers — it would be roughly seven hours before she finished loading her car.
"Oh, for (bleep's) sake," I mumbled as I chewed. "We're all slowly dying. Why waste time waiting on (bleep)-ing parking spaces."
My eyes drifted back to the rear view mirror. I hoped that Minnie Vanner would have done some calculations of her own, realized we'd all be dead in the ground before Lady Unloader wrapped things up, and move on to the vacant space within spitting distance of the one she wanted.
"It's right (bleep)-ing there!" I yelled into the mirror and the driver tapping away on the screen of her phone reflected there. "It's, like, 40 extra (bleep)-ing feet! Take it!"
Minnie Vanner continued tapping on her phone.
"Fine," I told the reflection. "Sit there until time ends. I'm (bleep)-ing leaving."
I lifted my foot from the brake and let my car drift backward at a snail's pace, hoping the minivan driver would sense the imminent collision between my vehicle and hers and use it as motivation to get the (bleep) out of the way.
She did not.
I brought my car to another stop, gave the unobservant driver's reflection a stern "what the heck?" look, and then turned to check on the Lady Unloader's progress.
From the look of fascination on her face, the cantaloupe she was studying must have been completely alien to her.
With a huff, I waited.
An eternity later, I glimpsed movement in my mirror. I was overjoyed by the sight of the minivan slowly rolling backward.
"Thank (bleep)-ing goodness," I muttered.
The driver gave me just enough room to clear the spot. As I pulled away, the van pulled forward and stopped again, blocking the now-empty space that had once been mine. Mere feet away, Lady Unloader opened another bag and marveled at what she discovered there.
ADAM ARMOUR is the news editor for the Daily Journal and former general manager of The Itawamba County Times. You may reach him via his Twitter handle, @admarmr.
