Grounds
Rounding the coffee aisle corner she smiles, waves. I motor my cart toward her. She grins. “I picked up sardines! Gefilte fish, too!! Yay!”
She knows I hate sardines and gefilte fish, cannot stand even a partially unrolled tin top or opened jar for the stench.
“You know,” I say cheerily, “Sardines and gefilte fish are forbidden in Maryland domiciles and transporting and opening even one tin, a single jar, let alone polluting a home’s climate with one, are Grounds.”
“Grounds?” she laughs. “Like Postum? Like Chicory? Like you, Chock Full O’…?”
“GROUNDS!” I growl.
—
A young man and a young woman, fingering the grind-your-own machine down the aisle turn to me and frown in unison. She says, “Do you even know this woman you’re a-bu-sing?”
I buzz the electric cart fifteen feet forward and glare in her face. She is emboldened. She turns. “Ma’am, would you like me to get the manager for you? Security? This. Man. Is. A. Lout.” The fellow at her side looks at the ground, says nothing.
T. starts to laugh, nods, says to the woman, “Do it.”
I buzz two feet, my front wheel inches from her red sandaled toes. She stands her ground. Her hapless companion remains mute.
“Ma’am, I cannot know whether you are a visitor to Maryland or simply a dreadfully under-informed citizen. The transport of reeking sardines and gefilte fish to private homes has been illegal here since the Annapolis Ptomaine-Gefilte Fish-Sardine Scare of 2009 that sickened numbers of America’s Finest Youth at our Naval Academy. You must have heard of it. I’ve no idea why my wife would want to violate the law by bringing them into our home.” I pause. “Doing so is Grounds.”
Tamar makes an outsized What Am I to Do With This Man? gesture.
The woman, reddening toward a pique, nearly shouts, “Grounds? Grounds? She ought to leave you, leave you right here in the coffee aisle!”
Tamar steps to her, drapes a sad arm across her tensed shoulders, looks at her companion, looks back at her with understanding eyes and whispers
“Too late. Get out while you can.”
We giggle our way home.
Jonathan Wolfman
08/29/2019 @ 1:48 pm
I find the coffee aisles full of stories.
Jonna Connelly
08/29/2019 @ 2:46 pm
Why did I never run into you guys at the Giant? (You’d love the cod cakes I got the dog yesterday.)
Jonathan Wolfman
08/29/2019 @ 2:48 pm
y u m
koshersalaami
08/30/2019 @ 9:03 am
Good story
Jonathan Wolfman
08/30/2019 @ 9:06 am
Thanks!
JP Hart
02/02/2024 @ 11:55 am
Google slowed my memory but not my bots. Once upon a time there was a cavern ~ stalagmites insync petrie scale dropped drips to drink ~ John Cameron Swayze ~ working his backstroke in somehow warm well-perked water {…} Wow! Taylor Swift’s thighs! My yell echoes {…} Shower at night, sailor’s delight I grinned, wishing I’d a warm robe for the journalist. He dried off with that crazy-LOUD hair dryer shouting: how many pentagons on a soccer ball …? WhatsIt?! One more W.I.Progress? 5): She wore blue velvet
7) Groundhog day, cat is away 5) Sixty-Minutes’ clock