Look everyone! It's snowing! Make sure you don't forget to freak the fuck out!
Why does snow make everyone insane? I saw grown men push elderly women and babies in strollers falling down stairs today as I ascended the 6 train platform and then the herds started pushing and shoving and a train caught on fire. It's just a little snow New York City, we will get through this. No one has to be shoved off a platform or their hair caught in an escalator [although this is something I have always secretly wanted to see.] for you to get to work on time.
I just wanted to go to Trader Joe's and get some frozen healthy entree I will forget about in my freezer after I can’t resist the street meat truck on the way home. I walk in and the place looks like the Apocalypse, broken bottles of 2 buck chucks and dented cans splattered around. People going out the in door and in the out door. But do not worry- everyone here is “green” and brought their reusable bags, so all is good in the world today. The college student holding the “end of the line” sign is being pushed out the door because the line has circled around that many times. I walk an ave to Whole Foods.
Helllllooo Whole Foods, you have a whole lot of overpriced shit but often give me free samples of items I will never buy so I frequent you. This place is also a mad house and I start to wonder if snow makes people more hungry? Do they think the snow is going to barricade them in their homes for weeks and they must stock up on $17 a lb salmon and risotto or they will surely die? I stop and look at the diced onions, carrot sticks and bags of prepackaged lettuce- it amuses me that people pay so much more money to have things cut for them when they could easily do it themselves and then BAM- I hit a lady with my cart.
She’s on the ground. I am holding a months worth of diced onions in my hand when the expiration date says it’s only good to next Monday! Oh the humanity! She’s looking at me and I feel like this is her own fault. She knew what she was getting into when she walked in here. People needed their goat cheese and jars of almonds at a premium and they would kill for it, or severely injure you to get it. Was she eyeing my diced onions? Was she too lazy to dice them herself? Maybe she has someone to dice them for her! She deserved to fall then. She was being too aggressive over the onions and no one likes an overly aggressive, spoiled woman who can’t even chop her own food. She is still down on the ground and now moaning in pain and rubbing her side. I start to feel bad, or “responsible” if you will. Then I hear the “Sorry” come out of my mouth and it’s as harsh as the “Hey bitch you cut me in line’s” that are going on in the checkout line upstairs. My merciless “sorry” surprises me but I know that it came from the New Yorker in me. The same part of me that immediately thought that this woman deserved to fall: The “if you couldn’t handle Whole Foods than you shouldn’t have came” mentality that applies to most things you experience here. i.e. You can’t afford to pay $1200 in rent a month here? Well then you shouldn't have came to New York. You can’t handle getting sideswiped by a taxi? Then why did you walk in the street? You’re crying about getting your precious IPhone stolen from you on the subway? Then why did you take the subway?
Why is she still whimpering on the ground? The only people that attend to her are the ones who are paid $8.75 an hour to do so. They nod at me knowingly, almost to say: “This bitch got a little overzealous about the veggies and got in your way.” If someone knocked me flat on my ass in a Whole Foods in Union Square you better believe I would get right up, rip an item straight from her hand, get me some more free samples, maybe a little “Kiss my Face” lotion freebie and be on my merry way.
But I decided that the frozen burrito and almond milk in my cart aren’t worth having to witness any more of this scene. I get a glimpse of a street meat truck outside. A chicken gyro for $3.50!? That’s my cue to leave and I elbow a few people on the way out the "in" door.
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