3-6 Inches Never Looked So Good

I imagine that if I am a very, very bad girl, I will die and meet my eternal doom inside a Kroger supermarket, where the clock is forever set to exactly three hours before a blizzard is scheduled to hit.

Like a suburban Scrooge, I was given a sneak preview of what my special hell would look like when I found myself out of milk at 3:00 yesterday, just as the first snowflakes started to fall. I knew Kroger would be busy. I knew Kroger would be chaotic. I was not prepared for a demon-infested inferno full of Krogerers Krogering.

When I arrived, the parking lot was full. Completely full. Drivers circled like sharks, hungrily looking for empty spaces. And this wasn’t the haggard but hopeful day-before-Thanksgiving crowd. Oh no. Through the car windows, I read panic in these Krogerers’ faces, incestuously coupled with sheer, googly-eyed insanity.

Immediately, I drove to the outermost edges of the lot. I didn’t care where I parked; I just wanted to get inside as quickly as possible. But even in the boonies I was nearly broadsided by an elderly zombie in a pickup truck, who actually tried to cut me off in an attempt to get the absolute worst parking spot available.

After giving him my patented middle-finger-glare (So sue me, I can’t give the finger. The best I can do is brake my car in front of the offending driver and stare into his or her eyes for a long, lingering, highly accusatory moment), I parked, raced inside and headed straight for the milk.

There, two dozen or so suburban matrons and working stiffs jostled and pushed in front of the refrigerators. Miraculously, I managed to elbow my way to the front of the crowd and grab three gallons of milk. Yes, three. Although I only needed one gallon, the general hysteria had temporarily convinced me that the impending Blizzard of ’06, with its promised 3-6 inches of snow, could leave us stranded for weeks without access to a supermarket. Bulldozing my way back to my cart, I dropped my armful of milk inside, triumphantly pushed off from the madding crowd and headed for the frozen foods.

That aisle was blissfully empty, save for one big-haired woman standing forlornly by the TGI Fridays twice-baked potatoes. As I walked briskly past her, the woman literally gasped, stumbled a bit and clutched her chest in my wake. You would have thought I had hit her in the back with my cart while pushing it at a dead run. Irritated by her dramatics, I glanced back at her. She was giving me my own trademarked middle-finger-glare! How dare she! “Excuse me,” I said in my best fuck you voice, before continuing on down the aisle.

After picking up a few more absolute snow survival kit necessities (Doritos, beer, sodas, beer, lip liner and beer), I made my way to the cash registers. Carts were backed up seven deep in each lane. Sighing, I parked my cart in the shortest line I could find.

Behind me, a trench-coated man with an executive haircut made impatient clucking noises before walking up to the conveyor belt and giving the checkout girl the evil eye. I exhaled loudly. He was representative of one of my biggest pet peeves- the men who show up on “special occasion” days to do the grocery shopping. Around Christmas time, they turn the baking aisle into an obstacle course as they squint at their wives’ shopping lists and scratch their heads in front of the spice racks. On this bad weather day, they waited eagle-eyed in the lines, scouring the crowds for a housewife so deep into her copy of Star Magazine that she wouldn’t notice as they wedeged their cart ahead of hers. The buggers. I scowled and pushed my cart to less than half an inch from the woman in front of me.

It took me thirty damn minutes to get through that line. I made it home and swore my family would starve before I’d hit Kroger three hours before a blizzard again. And fucking hell, it turned out I’d forgotten the fat free french vanilla creamer. This was going to be one shitty snow-in.

Still, I couldn’t help but be a little excited as I went to bed. Three to six inches. That would cover everything. I would wake up to the ethereal morning light that is an overnight snow’s calling card. And there would be sledding. Sledding! I was still considered to be a dangerous kamikaze on our cheap plastic coasters. I had knocked more than one eight-year-old stranger completely off his feet in years past. And laughed. And kept going. Backward.

But when morning finally came, I knew something was wrong. The light outside wasn’t pristine. It was grayish. Quickly, I went to the window and opened the curtains. “The hell?” I said aloud.

There was a minute dusting of snow on the ground. Enough to sprinkle on a gigantic beignet, maybe. If our yard was a beignet. But anyway.

The blizzard of ’06 was a bust. And I was Kroger’s bitch.

And suddenly, a cold day in hell didn’t seem quite so farfetched.