Unless, of course, a Walmart cashier claims your baby as her baby.Which is what happened to me–inevitably, I suppose given my relationship with Walmart.

Two weeks ago I was speeding toward the checkout lanes, eyes scanning each conveyor belt for the one with the fewest groceries. The shortest lanes–indeed, open and completely empty, as it was bright and early Monday  morning–were the 20 Items or Fewer registers (Yes–the signs actually say “20 Items or Less,” but that’s grammatically incorrect so I refuse to write it), but as I was doing a week’s worth of shopping, I passed them by without so much as a glance.

Until one of the express cashiers called out, “Hey, baby!” which stopped me in my tracks. Not because I thought I was getting hit on, but because the cashier, a middle-aged woman, was speaking literally– I’ve been stopped enough while grocery shopping to know when someone is talking to the Burt Squirt.

I paused in my pursuit of the shortest checkout line to indulge the friendly (and no doubt bored) cashier, pleased to see that I recognized her. Once upon a time, she told me the Burt Squirt was juicy. She’d checked me out lots of times since then–not surprising, since I do my grocery shopping every Monday around the same time, though she wasn’t normally in the express lanes, for which, as I mentioned, I had too many groceries. So, after we exchanged pleasantries (or rather, she flirted with the Burt Squirt: “Your mama didn’t see me, but you saw me, and you grinned, didn’t you, baby! Yes, you know me, big boy!”), I started to wheel my cart around in search of another register.

“Y’all come over here to me!” she said, and wouldn’t hear my protests about having a good deal more than twenty items. “I gotta talk to my baby, see what new with him!”

It was at this point that I realized, to my chagrin, that I’d never bothered to find out her name, even though it had been right there pinned to her blue polo shirt for me to read every time she’d rung up my groceries. Tempie–I could remember that, since the Dallas Classical radio station’s daytime announcer is named Tempie.

As Walmart Tempie rang us up, she kept up a running conversation with Liam, as well as with the customer behind me in line: “This my Monday baby! Look how he smile at me! Oh, he waving now–he know it time to go, mmm-hmm, he know it!”

Last Monday Tempie wasn’t working the self-checkouts, but was back at her usual lane–which happened to be the shortest, so I got in it. Before she’d even finished scanning all her current customer’s groceries, she’d spotted us farther back in line and was saying, “There’s my Monday baby! He smiling at me–he know his friend!”

His friend.

She wasn’t his cashier.

He wasn’t her customer.

Friends.

For the first time since I began making dreaded weekly grocery shopping trips, it occurred to me that more goes on in Walmart than just hurrying in, checking off all the items on my list, and hurrying back out again. (More, even, than having another funny encounter to add to my collection of vaguely amusing anecdotes.)

Today I broke the cardinal rule of grocery shopping. I didn’t get in the shortest checkout line. I looked for Tempie, and I got in her line, which was, in fact, the longest. But the smile that lit up her tired face when she saw the Burt Squirt was worth the wait–if, indeed, we did wait any extra time; I thought the rhythmic beep beep of the bar code scanner accelerated, as if Tempie was in a hurry to finish up with her other customer so she could talk to the Burt Squirt properly.

Or maybe she didn’t work any faster. Maybe I just realized there was no need to rush, that there are more unpleasant things I could have been doing this morning than listening to a grocery store cashier tell a total stranger how nice my–her–baby is who comes to see her every Monday.

Even if–especially if–it’s at Walmart.

How do I know this?

Well…After I managed to snag nearly $60 worth of spices for $4 last Sunday, I might have gone back to Albertsons the following Friday and seen that the deal was still on and they had an Italian spice blend in this time and I still had a $3.00 off coupon and cleaned them out again without once swiping my credit card.

And, addicted to amused by hitting the jackpot not once, but twice, Mr. Burt and I might have driven to two other nearby Albertsons (because there was a cinnamon sugar blend we hadn’t managed to score yet), only to discover that there are other shoppers like us in town but no other Albertsons employees who like to watch customers treat the self-checkout like a slot machine; the other Carrollton store had sold clean out of the bargain spice grinders, and while the Lewisville location had plenty in stock, they’d rigged the self-checkouts to discourage the kind of extreme couponing required to pull off this deal.

And I might have made a third trip to my neighborhood Albertsons yesterday (not for free spices, I swear!) and discovered that they had followed suit.

It was a buzz kill sad day for frugality, but I take heart in the knowledge that I got $133.92 worth of spices for the low low price of $4.

Pepper, anyone?

You know when you go to the store for two or three specific items and you come out with considerably more than what’s on your list? That happened to Mr. Burt and me today. Only usually when that happens, you also come out with considerably less money than you expected. Which is not what happened to Mr. Burt and me when we went to Albertsons this evening for onion powder, turmeric, paprika, and ground coriander, and came out with an additional twenty-one jars of spices.

Yes, you read that correctly: twenty-one jars of spices.

It all started when the only ground coriander we could find cost a whopping $6.29. As we had whole coriander in our spice rack at home, which has never been used in the six and a half years since we were given said spice rack for our wedding, it seemed like the thing to do was to buy a pepper mill and grind our own coriander. (Probably it should have seemed like the thing to do was to throw out six and a half year-old coriander, but this is a couple of cheapskates with compulsive hoarding tendencies we’re talking about.)

Problem being, there were no pepperless mills for sale.

But this wasn’t much of a problem, after all, as Albertsons was running a special on McCormick peppercorn and sea salt grinders. For the low low price of $1 (regularly $2.79), we could empty the black peppercorn from the grinder and fill it with our rancid old coriander.

We grabbed two, though looking back, we couldn’t tell you why we grabbed two. It was just lucky that we did, as, at the end of our transaction, the coupon printer presented us with a coupon for $1.50 off the purchase of two McCormick spices.

“Does that mean,” Mr. Burt said, “that we could buy two more of those black peppercorn grinders for fifty cents?”

I reasoned that it wouldn’t hurt to see, since we regularly cook with fresh ground pepper, so Mr. Burt ran back to the spice aisle for two more. Sure enough, after our coupon, they rang up for fifty cents.

And we got another of those buy two, get $1.50 off coupons.

Only this time I read the fine print, which stated that there was also the option of buying three McCormick spices and getting a $3.00 off coupon.

Mr. Burt’s eyes locked with mine.

He raced back to the spice aisle and got six more. We paid $1.50 for the first three spice jars and got a coupon to apply to the next three. Which came up free, not even requiring us to swipe a credit card, and still printed off a $3.00 off coupon.

“What the heck?” Mr. Burt cried through his hysterical laughter. “Can we now get infinite free peppercorn grinders?”

I shot a furtive glance at the Albertsons employee manning the self-checkouts, afraid he’d report us to a manager who’d kick us out of the store for taking advantage of this extraordinarily good deal, but he was laughing along with us.

“That’s the beauty of the self-checkouts,” he said. “Sometimes you hit the jackpot. It’s like your own personal Las Vegas.”

Mr. Burt and I had better not ever go to Las Vegas. Compulsive personalities, I repeat. With the permission of the cashier, we cleaned out Albertsons’ entire stock of peppercorn and sea salt grinders. (Conveniently, it was a number divisible by three.)

All told, we came home with twenty-one jars and only paid $4. We could have gotten them for $3, if we’d cottoned to the system earlier. Still, that was only $4 for $58.59 worth of pepper, pepper blends, and sea salt.

And at the end, there was another $3 off three coupon.We asked the cashier what we should do with it. He didn’t suggest we leave it for the next customer; he encouraged us to go to another Albertsons and clean out their stock. We didn’t, because the story was already funny enough.

Or was it?

In any case, we have more salt and pepper than we can use by the 2014 expiration date. If you need some, come to our house. You can have three–and our coupon.

(And if you were wondering, our little plan to use a pepper mill for our coriander fell flat, as the jars are constructed with non-removable tops. We didn’t notice anything missing from our steaks.)

Cute as he was wearing Mommy’s oversized sunglasses, however, my little boy was not the only person who captivated my attention in that moment. We were, after all, in Walmart. But this was not one of my typical encounters with Walmart clientele.

The husband and wife could barely walk, they were so old and frail, and they were holding hands. I got the feeling they weren’t holding hands because they needed to, but because they wanted to. All those years ago when they discovered they liked each other, then fell in love, they’d held hands; why wouldn’t they continue to do so after a lifetime together had given them reason to love and like each other even more?

Their smiles initially may have been expressions of happiness at being together, defying, for one more day, the physical limitations of age to perform such necessary tasks as grocery shopping, but I soon realized they were grinning at the Burt Squirt and me as we continued to giggle over the sunglasses. I stopped pushing the buggy as the lady released her husband’s hand and haltingly approached us.

“Look at that chubby little foot!”  She caught said chubby little foot in her gnarled hands and squeezed it, cooing and crooning to the Burt Squirt, and beaming up at me. “Oh, congratulations! Congratulations!”

“Congratulations!” her husband echoed, flashing a smile as gummy as the Burt Squirt’s, giving one of the chubby baby cheeks a pinch.

I thanked them, wondering how many of their own children, grandchildren, maybe even great-grandchildren they were thinking of with so much love in their eyes as they played with my baby boy.

“You look so happy,” the lady said with a sigh. “You both look so happy.” Then she clasped hands with her husband again and continued on into Walmart.

I wish I’d thought to tell her that she looked happy, too, and that I hope someday a young mother thinks the same thing about Mr. Burt and me when it’s all we can do to totter into Walmart, hand-in-hand, and squeeze chubby babies who remind us of the Burt Squirt.

Her Dying Wish (Part 2)

Normally, Saturday mornings were for her (as they are for everybody–as they are for you) bliss.  Waking up is a delight because you have slept well, your subconscious untroubled in slumber by the unpleasant prospect of being woken by an alarm and having to go to work and finding repose in the freedom of an entire day ahead of you to do as you please–or, if you are dying, an entire day to do the things you always wanted to do before you die.

This Saturday, however, she awoke feeling as if she had never slept at all.  She did not remember in any detail the nightmares of Soviet hostels that had prevented her achieving rest, but she vividly recalled her previous night’s struggle with disloyalty to Heavenly Cloud, and hated herself a little now for her reaction of dread for her physical comfort when she became aware of her need for the bathroom, which was precisely the terror that had troubled her sleep.  And when she discovered that the first roll of toilet paper had not been an anomaly in the package, all thoughts were forgotten of how she was going to seize her remaining days.

She retreated to bed, curled up in a fetal position, and resisted the temptation to open her laptop and try to restore the document she had deleted last night.

The extraordinary thing, however, was that if you saw her that day, hiding in her bed from herself and her deepest-seated impulses, you would not have thought her pathetic.  And if you’d known her before she thought she was dying of melanoma, you would say that she had never been this passionate, for good or ill, about anything but Heavenly Cloud toilet paper in her whole life to date.  You would choose to be around this version of her rather than the old, because now even though Heavenly Cloud was, once more, the instigator of her passion, something else lurked beneath the surface.  Something interesting and even inspiring.  The very thing, in fact, which John Roberts observed in her when he watched her run riot through the supermarket.  A few minutes with her would, inevitably, have you thinking of an un-hatched egg which, the night before, had an unblemished shell but which, by this morning, had gained a crack from the chick’s first peck of its tiny beak.

By Sunday, the use of Heavenly Cloud toilet paper had caused even more cracks in the veneer.  Unfortunately, the first person who saw her was Mrs. Reverend Green, who mistook them for simply cracking up.

It can hardly come as a surprise to you that someone who purchased her favorite brand of toilet paper for complete strangers in the supermarket also had been known to tell fellow members of her church that if the custodian someday ceased to purchase Heavenly Cloud for the church bathrooms (he thought less about comfort than about the fact that the brand name had a certain churchy-ness about it) she would have to consider changing congregations.  So, after she’d been tortured for two days by the new formula she thought church would give her sanctuary.  The last thing she needed on top of melanoma was a kidney backup.

Good news was, she didn’t get a kidney backup.

Bad news was, she developed a case of adult-onset potty mouth.

Glossing over the exact words she used, we shall simply say that she found no relief in the first stall of the ladies’ room…

…or the second…

…or the third…

…and saw a loathed diamond weave pattern staring back at her with mockery in its pinprick eyes.

For good measure, she told the moron who built the church and hung all the doors so that they swung inward instead of out where he could go.

“Merciful heavens.”

The merciful heavens were quite the opposite of where she had told Gary Burns to go; they were, however, what Mrs. Reverend Green entreated when she entered the ladies’ room with Nola Davies (who was, at age 97, the oldest member of the congregation and, frighteningly, still drove herself to every church service) and heard the un-churchly words echo from the last stall.

Any other church member, having been caught using bad language in front of Mrs. Green and Nola Davies, would have shuffled meekly out of that bathroom stall, red-faced and unable to make eye contact.  Any other church member would have apologized profusely, made excuses, and prayed God was too busy resting on the Sabbath to notice what words came out of one woman’s mouth.

Not her.

She laughed.

For as she emerged from the last stall and saw Mrs. Green standing in the doorway, a fog she hadn’t been aware of previously cleared from her mind.  Once she’d dreamed about saying a bad word at church.  Mrs. Green’s  dream face had looked just like it did now, a caricature of scandalized.  She was tempted to say another one just so she could snap a picture with her camera phone to record the expression.

If you asked her why she wanted a picture, she would tell you so she could look back and find this perfect happiness again when life inevitably made it elude her–which the melanoma she might (or might not) have would do soon enough.

But she didn’t curse again, or get out her camera phone.  If you asked her why, she would have told you that it was because this wasn’t perfect happiness–though she felt closer to it than when she was wreaking havoc in the Though Shalt Not Touch Aisle or writing her complaint letter/horror story.

Now, for the first time, she feared her imminent death.  She wasn’t ready to go yet, not without having achieved perfect happiness.  All her life she’d thought it would come from a European vacation or writing a novel, or, by a very slight chance, from skydiving.  But now she knew the key to that happiness lay within her. There was only one thing she could do to find it.

And she had to do it now.

“I’m going home sick,” she said.  “Melanoma, you know.”

She was out the door and on her way, and so missed Mrs. Green shaking her head and saying that, melanoma or not, there was never an excuse to use bad language, and Nola seasoning her speech with salt in a way the Bible didn’t exactly mean.

“I’d sign up for melanoma if it meant I could do the things I always dreamed of and look that happy,” she cried.  “Now help me wash my hands!”

#

If you asked her how she expected to feel and what she expected to happen when she sent the Heavenly Cloud manufacturer a complaint email about the new toilet paper formula, she would have told you stonily:  “Nothing.  I have no expectations.”

The truth was, before she sent the email, she expected to hit ‘send’ and immediately burst out laughing, her head thrown back as it had been that day in the supermarket when she broke the jars of pickles and realized she’d just given in to a heart’s desire.  There had been glee in punching ire into her keyboard, a heart-pumping exhilaration at clicking ‘send’–but it all fled, and no happiness, not even imperfect happiness, took its place.

This was, of course, because it was the results of these actions, the reactions–the supermarket employee running frantically with mop and caution sign to clean up the spilled pickle juice before someone slipped and filed a lawsuit; Mrs. Green looking so scandalized to hear swear words at church–that she had always longed for, not actually the little rebellions against society in and of themselves.

The truth of this hit her as the message went whizzing through cyberspace, and she let out a cry as though struck in the chest.

A complaint email could only be satisfactory if she got an email back in reply, and whether any such thing would appear in her inbox was highly debatable.  Doubtful, even.  Unlikely, as customer service representatives in general weren’t exactly known for providing satisfactory responses to anything.  She definitely wouldn’t hear anything immediately, as today was Sunday.

Also, there simply wasn’t much you could say back to, “Heavenly Cloud would be more aptly renamed Hell Fire,” especially when it was signed, “a very dissatisfied customer who is dying of melanoma and would prefer her last days to be as blissful as the heavenly cloud she will soon inhabit.”

She held out half a hope that maybe the person in the complaint department would also have recently learned he was dying and answer as an act of impulse.  There was nothing to expect except that this would be out of her system, and she would not die and haunt the world as a ghost because she’d left business unfinished.  Because she knew now that she hadn’t really wanted to travel to Europe, write a novel, or skydive before she died.

There was one thing she was expecting, which she had all but forgotten, and that was that her dermatologist was due to call her on Monday with the results of her mole biopsy.  This was not the sort of thing most people forgot.  Since she had diagnosed herself with terminal cancer from the onset, she had not given a second thought to the fact that nothing about her health was actually confirmed.  Thus, fearful expectation of test results had no part in the despondency that fell over her upon emailing the manufacturer.  Instead, it was pure confusion about her desires and what it meant to be happy.  If it had all only been about getting something out of her system, then why had it made her so deliriously glad, teasing her with the promise of perfect bliss?

She slept badly–again–and woke Monday morning in a worse state than she had even after that first morning of using the horrible toilet paper.  She called in sick from work; if she didn’t really know any more what she wanted to do before she died, she at least knew she didn’t want to be at work.  Though she was not consciously expecting anything from this day, her manager thought she sounded anxious–like she’d received a death threat.  Indeed, if you saw her then, you would inevitably think once more of that hatching egg, the shell no longer smooth, unbroken white, but cracked all over and shifting like a miniature buckling of tectonic plates as the little bird within pecked and flapped with frail, new wings.

And then, just as she was drifting off into depressed slumber, her phone rang.

Her heart began to pound.

“Your biopsy’s negative.  You just have a weird mole.  Or had.  It’s the lab’s now.”

Fifteen words.

Fifteen words from a receptionist were all her heart required to break.

She wasn’t dying.

It made sense, considering she’d never felt ill or displayed any other symptom of melanoma.  Her socially deviant behavior, of course, though uncharacteristic for her, would not have been physically connected to cancer even if her mole biopsy had come back malignant.

But it had not.

She supposed she ought to be relieved and thankful, but she was far from it.  She wasn’t dying, but now that she’d done all she wanted to do before she died, she wasn’t sure she had anything left to live for.

All she had to live with was a lot of guilt that came down on her so crushingly that all she could do was lie prone on her bed.

Up till now, she’d not felt badly for a single thing she’d done, her supposed impending death giving her a sort of immunity.  In this moment of learning that she would live on and on, however, bravado fled, and she was pummeled with accusations from her conscience:  destruction of property, coarse language, harassment…And it made her furious.  She had been duped.  Deceived by that serpent who promised knowledge and happiness.  Suckered into sinning, coerced into criminal acts…

Now, this feeling she was mistaking for guilt was actually sorrow that she’d been caught.  If you were dying, no one could excommunicate you or send you to prison.  And that was really all she was thinking now: what did Mrs. Green think of her now for swearing at church?  And Nola Davies?

(Nola was, in fact, praying not to die before next Sunday so she could again see that young woman who swore like a sailor in front of Mrs. Green and was so happy.)

She even felt sick–irrationally–over what that man who’d asked her out in the Thou Shalt Not Touch Aisle thought of her.  She must have been mistaken about his asking her out; he could only have been trying to mortify her, in some roundabout way, for her rude, crude, and socially unacceptable behavior.

As it turned out, John Roberts was not an irrational thought, as her brain told her, but the key to everything.  The proof that what she was feeling was not guilt, as she erroneously believed, came when there was a knock at her apartment door.

The first thought it prompted was that if there was anything she wanted to do before she died, it was never answer a door again.  But she got up anyway–not really weighed down by immobilizing guilt.

Standing on her tip-toes to look out the peephole, she saw a man in a suit, with his collar open and his tie undone.  On one shoulder he balanced a large, lumpy, blue and white parcel.

Curiosity distracted her from the fact that her heart was no longer in her chest where it was supposed to be, but residing considerably further north, cutting off her flow of air.  When she opened the door the first thing out of her mouth was not, “You’re the handsome executive who asked me out,” but instead was, “Is that…toilet paper?”

It was, and before John could answer, she noted the blue label and told him, “I only use Heavenly Cloud, though I guess I’ll have to switch brands since they changed the formula–”

“Did you buy the Heavenly Cloud in the red package?”

She thought for a moment, more about the fact that she’d previously missed what a pleasantly low, soft quality there was to his voice, than about his question.  It was exactly the male voice she’d always wanted to hear addressing her, pronouncing her name, but had all but given up on hearing, as dates became fewer and farther between.

“Yes,” she answered.

“You should’ve bought the Heavenly Cloud in the blue package.”  John lowered it from his shoulder and held it out to her so that she could see that the plastic wrap read, ‘New!  Heavenly Cloud Ultra Soft.’

“I don’t understand.”  She opened the door a little wider and stepped backward, further into her apartment.  “I’ve always bought the Heavenly Cloud in the red package.  It was always soft enough.”

Beneath his dark hair, his forehead creased.  “I knew the packaging would be confusing.  Our traditional red look went to the Ultra Strong formula.  That’s why it felt like Quilt Thick.”

He tried to press the toilet paper into her hands, and now the twelve-pack fell onto both their toes as she let out a gasp of realization.

“You’re the guy who reads the company’s complaint emails?”  Her face flushed violently hot.

“Not normally.  I’m the External Relations Manager, but I’ve been looking at the complaint emails since we revamped our product.  Yours was the first thing I saw when I went in this morning.”

“Great external relations.”

John grinned.  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mary.

Or is it Mary Beth?  And that was a great email.  Instrument of torture in a Soviet hostel, huh?”

She went by just plain Mary, but was too flummoxed to tell him.  “You knew it would be me here.  How?”

“You said you were dying of melanoma.  I saw you buy Heavenly Cloud Ultra Strong.  I knew you were a woman who does whatever you please, even if it’s not a social norm, and that it makes you very happy.”  His Adam’s apple bobbed, and his gaze flicked down to her lips.  His tongue darted out to moisten his own.  “I just knew.”

Mary held the doorknob for support, and she felt herself swaying toward him.  But she held back, a lump suddenly lodging in her throat.  “I’m not.”

“Not what?”

“Not dying and not happy and not doing what I please.  The serpent–”

“The serpent?  Are you sure your name isn’t Eve?”  He grinned; it was a smile she couldn’t help returning.  “No, it was all you, Mary Beth, and you’re definitely a happy woman, and I have to say I’m very, very happy to hear you’re not dying.”  John leaned toward her, reached out as if to touch her, but then withdrew.  “What do you say we go to a fancy restaurant tonight?  You can go in jeans and a t-shirt, and I–well, I’ve always wanted to put ‘no shirt, no shoes, no service’ to a test.  Haven’t you?”

#

From that moment onward, if you asked Mary Beth Jameson what she wanted to do before she died, she would tell you things surprising and remarkable: not to travel to Europe (though she and John had booked a ski trip to Switzerland for this coming Christmas), not to write a novel, nor to go skydiving, not even if she was feeling adventurous when you asked her.

(Although, that did not mean she was opposed to the idea; in fact, she and Nola Davies had signed up to take skydiving lessons.  But that was Nola Davies’ dream, not hers.)

If she told you what she did want to do before she died, you would not believe her, because these were not the things everyone wanted to do before they died–certainly not the things you yourself want to do before you die.

Or at least not the things you yourself admit to wanting to do before you die.

Regardless of whether or not you believed she really wanted to do these things, if she told you she wanted to, she would be telling you the truth.  Because unlike everyone else who said they wanted to travel to Europe or write a novel before they died, Mary Beth Jameson had actually done the things she had always wanted to do before she died, was doing them on a regular basis, because the only thing she had really wanted to do before she died was to live.

And she began by putting the rest of her package of Heavenly Cloud to good use…

…TPing Reverend and Mrs. Green’s house.

Since my readers are probably more interested in what I write than in how I write it, I’ll kick off Fiction Fridays with a short story I wrote a few years ago.  Actually, it’s not terribly short, so I’ll break it into two parts to post this week and next.  It’s a humor piece, and a love story, and it stars a roll of toilet paper.  Something for everyone.

Her Dying Wish

by LR Burt

If you asked her what she wanted to do before she died, she would tell you things unsurprising and unremarkable: to travel to Europe, to write a novel, to go skydiving, maybe, if she was feeling adventurous.

If she told you this, you would believe her; after all, everybody, yourself included, wants to travel to Europe, write a novel, and skydive before they die.

Like everyone who claims these dying wishes, she never put spare change in a jar to save for that European vacation; she never sat down to write the first line of the novel that came to her as a lightning bolt of inspiration; she definitely never felt adventurous enough to sign up for a skydiving course.

No, what she dreamed of, in her secret heart, was to knock glass jars off supermarket shelves; to say swear words in places and in front of people she shouldn’t; to write a scathing letter to a person of great importance.

In short, what she wanted to do before she died was to become a menace to society.

Of course, if you asked her, she would never tell you that, because as far as she knew, she really and truly believed she was exactly like everybody else–and nobody else wanted to become a menace to society before they died. At least, no one told her otherwise. If anyone had, she might have recognized her real dreams sooner, without resistance or thinking she was going mad, and by pleasanter means than the threat of her imminent death.

Although, if she had recognized her real dreams under less urgent circumstances, she would not have realized that she’d never really lived at all, or felt so acutely what it meant to come to life.

“This mole concerns me.  I’d like to remove it and send it for a biopsy.”

Fifteen words from a dermatologist were all her imagination required to self-diagnose melanoma.  This was not a typical reaction.  Most people would pay their $25 co-pay, then spend the rest of the day phoning family and friends to help them deny the possibility of anything being seriously wrong with them.  She, having no one, called her boss to say she wouldn’t be coming in for a half day as planned.  Because, as she didn’t say, she knew she would be too busy googling ‘melanoma’ to get any work done.

On her way home, she hit the drive-thru for a burger, which she never touched; when she flopped down on her couch with her laptop to eat it, she couldn’t stop herself clicking to view the image results of her search, which made her imagine every mole on her body swelling up to hamburger patty proportions.  Needless to say, this was not what she could expect for the progression of the disease if she had it.  (And you must remember, there was no hard evidence that she did.)  But the imagination is not known for medical realism–and to be fair, pictures of cancerous moles would make almost anyone lose their appetite.

Rather than navigating away from the images, or, better yet, closing her browser session completely and escaping into the world of daytime television, she continued to look.  In what to her mind was a rational way, she accepted that appetite loss would be a condition to which she would soon grow accustomed when she began aggressive chemotherapy.  Not that she had very long to get used to not eating, with a 9-15% survival rate.

At which point she began to wonder:  did she really want pass the few days remaining to her in a hospital bed?  She could live with the fact that her predestined date with her Maker was coming soon and very soon.

The operative word being live.

As her own voice replayed in her head stating all the things she’d always said she wanted to do before she died, her cursor once more found its way into the browser search box.  Her fingers, as though commanded by an irresistible inner urging, clicked over the keyboard, rattling out the query:  ‘European dream vacation.’

Despite having no real, heartfelt desire to tour Europe before her death, her appetite returned with the pictures of gourmet French restaurants and Venetian cafes; she now believed more strongly than ever that these were her dying wishes.  When her stomach’s gurgles increased to un-ignorable growls, she got up from her sofa, strode purposefully across her apartment, slid on the flip flops she’d abandoned at the door, and stepped out into the clear evening.  She would just pop into the supermarket for French onion soup fixings, a loaf of sourdough, maybe biscotti for dessert, definitely a bottle of cabernet.  She’d watch the Travel Channel from the kitchen while the soup simmered.  After the meal she’d book her vacation, then settle down to write the first chapter or two of her novel.

(Also, she was out of toilet paper and couldn’t wait much longer.)

As of a minute ago she’d never had one single idea for a novel.  Now, entire, beautifully worded paragraphs were sure to spring from her mind, fully formed like the goddess Athena from Zeus’ head.  Her novel would be about a woman with less than six months to live who decided to do all the things she’d always said she wanted to do before she died.  Like go skydiving.

Or it would have been, had she been predestined to make it to the produce section.  Alas, she never did…

…or the liquor aisle…

…or the one with the broth….

…or the bakery…

…and therefore she was predestined not to have her European inspired meal or plan the vacation she did not really, in her heart of hearts, want to take.

En route to the produce section, she was distracted by the aisle which she had, since childhood, always thought of as the Thou Shalt Not Touch Aisle.  This, of course, was the one where jars of pickles, mayonnaise, salad dressing, mustard, ketchup, barbecue sauce, marinades, and jams, jellies, and preserves stood on shelves, a veritable rainbow encased in glass and gleaming under halogen lights.

A serpent whispered in her ear:  Hast thy mother really said thou shalt not touch the merchandise on this aisle?

Her mother definitely had; her nightmares were haunted by a white-faced and tight-lipped wagging-fingered warning which even in adulthood kept her dead center of the aisle, hands glued to her cart, too intimidated to actually shop.

Only today, the cart veered slightly to the left of center.  She barely had time to assume that the wheels must be out of alignment (they weren’t) before a disturbing image loomed in her mind, of herself wearing an evil leer as she–purposely–rammed her cart into the pickles.  She envisioned several jars plummeting to the tiled floor below, hitting with a crash; as she imagined jagged shards scattering, she could almost smell the wave of yellow-green, acerbic juice that would flood the aisle if she were really to do such a thing.  In actuality, her fingers locked in a death grip as she closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, savoring the brine and vinegar tang that swirled upward from the imaginary wreckage and into her slightly flared nostrils.

Like a shark teased by the scent of blood wafting in the water, her eyes snapped open, narrowed but gleaming with madness as she bent over her cart, elbows akimbo, and rammed it into a shelf.

CRASH!

A half-dozen or so pickle jars hit the floor and shattered her dream-state.

Horrified, she saw that she really had carried out the random act of destruction.

Down the aisle, a lean, black-haired man wearing a dark business suit stared at her.  She interpreted his slight smile as a smirk and thought he could only be laughing at the clumsy dork.  Or maybe the crazy maniac.  The intensity of his gaze made a hot flush prickle its way up from the neck of her t-shirt and bloom on her face as she silently told herself of course she was just a clumsy dork, absolutely it had been an accident, she had most definitely not hit the pickle shelf with her cart on purpose.

And then the man spoke:  “Hello.”

Three steps brought him to a more conversational distance from her.  One hand tugged at his tie, which hung loose in the open collar of his dress shirt, as he extended the other to her.  She didn’t shake it, because she was too busy thinking he looked nervous, which he was, and trying to work out why; women wearing grubby t-shirts they got free for donating blood didn’t make handsome men in expensive suits (she thought it might even be Armani) nervous.  Nor would she have believed him if he told her it was because he felt like he was meeting Princess Di or Mother Teresa or some great woman who was living out her life’s destiny regardless of what other people thought about her chosen path.

But nerves and her failure to shake his hand didn’t stop him from saying, “I’m John.  John Roberts.  Would you…want to have a drink?  With me?”

Her heart leapt.  Wouldn’t she! It had been years since she’d had a date, and she’d never had one with a man who wore Armani–

Just as abruptly, her heart fell did a petrifying freefall exactly like the one she imagined she would experience if she ever got adventurous enough to go skydiving.

Years.  She didn’t have years.

“Thanks,” she said, clutching the handle of her shopping cart tighter, trying (unsuccessfully) to ignore the inner twinge at the sight of his hand falling to his side and his cheeks going pink with mortification.  “I can’t.  I’ve got melanoma.  It’s terminal.”

Sure that he would rat her out in revenge for her rejection (he was actually thinking that it was always these angels who were taken too soon–too good for earth, they were), she didn’t wait for his reaction.  Instead, she wheeled her cart around and sped toward the end of the aisle, cringing at the dill spears squashing beneath the wheels and her flip flops, oozing a trail of juice behind her in the dust on the linoleum.

You’ve just committed a hit and run!  You’re a disloyal customer.  A bad citizen.  And you turned down a date with Probably Mr. Right.  You’re a complete and utter social deviant.

Not to mention a total idiot!

But her inner voice contained no authority, and did not command her to stop.  Instead, her pace quickened, carrying her more speedily away from the scene of the crime.  Her haste, however, was not motivated by shame or guilt for destroying private property, or even from regret that she’d turned down John Roberts.

“CLEAN-UP ON AISLE SEVEN!” she shrieked.  Or tried to shriek.  It came out more a squeak, strangled by a peal of laughter that pushed itself out of her lungs.

Her blood bubbled, her heart raced…It felt suspiciously like a thrill.  Which was exactly what it was, though she rejected the notion because normal people weren’t thrilled by deviance or stupid relationship moves.  She settled on exhilaration and blamed it on her impulsiveness, combined with the shock of learning of her own imminent death and being asked out by an incredibly handsome, apparently rich, man.

This was not the same life she had been not-living a few short hours ago.

She didn’t feel like herself at all.

If she had fled the supermarket then, she was not so far given over to her emerging desires that she could not have gone back to life as it had been prior to that point in time.  Sensing this, she panicked a little at the brink of change.  Still speeding toward the supermarket exit, she reasoned that mere months from her death was not the best time to suffer an identity crisis; she’d better go home and have a normal boring evening before she did something she regretted.

As it was, God (probably not the Judeo-Christian God, as He is not, historically, given to promoting delinquent behavior), the Universe, or Destiny, call it whatever you like, intervened.  A sudden burning within reminded her that while she could go home without French onion soup, French bread, biscotti, or cabernet, she could not go home without toilet paper.

So she pulled a u-turn.  She very narrowly avoided a collision with an apron-clad teenaged boy scurrying with a mop and yellow caution sign toward the Thou Shalt Not Touch Aisle.  The sight made her laugh again.  She raced toward the paper products aisle, astonished by the maniacal quality of her laugh, and yet unable able to stop laughing, not because she thought the situation was very funny so much as the act of laughing simply felt very, physically, good.

She’d never noticed before the precise way a laugh rippled up from her belly, making her chest feel big and full.  It was if the air she was breathing was made of pure joy, which tickled and tingled its way through her throat and out her lips.  And she’d never paid attention to the way the sound rang in her ears and made them feel pricked, alert, like a delighted dog’s or cat’s; or how, when her head was lolling back, her long ponytail whispered against the cotton of her t-shirt; or that her face, tilted up, up like a sunflower, felt so warm in rapture.

They were, of course, the sounds and sensations of a dream coming true.  But as we have established, she didn’t know she’d dreamed of this, so it never occurred to her that she was experiencing the endorphin rush that signified the culmination of a life-long desire.

(It also never occurred to her that John might have followed her or watched her from around the corner of a Heavenly Cloud toilet paper display stacked in the center of the aisle.)

One thought in her mind, of which she was not now fully conscious, but which, over the next few days, would become her singular, driving passion, was that if her melanoma struck her dead right now, as she ran her cart into that very display of Heavenly Cloud, toppling the tower of squashy building blocks, she would die a happy woman.  Or as close to happy as she could be, with dreams yet unrealized.

She was, by far, happier than she had ever been in her life to date.

#

It was the toilet paper that fundamentally altered her future.  A few squares of Heavenly Cloud set her life on an irrevocable course spiraling toward what she eventually would deem bliss.

Bliss was not, however, an adjective she would attach to the new roll of toilet paper.  She had not noticed, in her haste to get her Heavenly Cloud and get out of the supermarket, that the words “NEW AND IMPROVED FORMULA!” were emblazoned across the package.  Her personal experience found the former descriptor to be accurate, but as for improved… The formula violated everything she stood for as a toilet paper consumer–especially one who swore that God Himself stocked the bathrooms of His mansions with this brand.

She used Heavenly Cloud religiously, and if she saw you in the supermarket with any other brand in your cart, she would give you the $6.97 to buy a package of Heavenly Cloud.

Thus her current outrage.  She, who had been so faithful, had been betrayed–as no one in history had been since Judas sold Jesus for thirty pieces of silver.  All those people she’d converted!

Jerking the offending roll off the spring-mount wall holder, she tore off sheet after sheet, tossing them into the toilet.  She flushed it repeatedly until all that remained in her hand was an empty cardboard tube, and in her chest, a heart throbbing with satisfaction and adrenaline which prompted her to sprint to the living room and take up her laptop from where she’d abandoned it on the sofa when she decided to go to the supermarket.

Her fingers rattled across the keys in what she intended to be the beginning of a very scathing letter of complaint to the manufacturer of Heavenly Cloud toilet paper…

…only what came out was more like a horror story about a woman who’d found herself captive in a Soviet hostel where this formula of Heavenly Cloud was used as an instrument of torture.  Unable to stop herself from pounding violence and vitriol into her keyboard, she began to laugh, just as she had done while running amok in the supermarket.  She thought of that poor boy who’d had to clean up all those squashed pickles; what would Heavenly Cloud’s complaint department think if she told them cleaning up kitchen accidents was all their toilet paper was good for?

But her laughter and typing ceased when her conscience suddenly screamed, “WHAT IN HEAVEN’S NAME ARE YOU DOING?”

Fingers still curved in the home key position over the laptop, she sat for a second, chest heaving to catch her breath.  What was she doing?

Heavenly Cloud had never let her down before.  The flushed roll had been just one of twelve.  Perhaps only the one felt like a paper product rather than a textile.  Surely she could give Heavenly Cloud the benefit of the doubt?

With shaking hands, she selected the entire text of her document and punched delete–though not without a tightness in her throat and chest that made her next movements seem sluggish acts of will.

She shut down her computer, set it on the side table, switched off the lamp, and retreated to her bedroom.  Falling into bed, she pulled the covers up to her chin.  She was very tired; drained, in fact–as you tend to feel when a stopper is suddenly placed in your over-brimming happiness.

If only she knew that by writing that letter, the feeling would return and increase–and bring her something entirely unexpected, and even more secretly desired than deviant behavior.