Her voice grabs me as soon as I roll the grocery cart into the store, her life stories wafting up and down the aisles mixing and mingling with the aroma of fresh baked pies, cookies and cakes.<\/p>\n
No matter where she is in this vast store, I recognize her voice. I work to avoid her. When I fail, I avoid eye contact.<\/p>\n
She zips her motorized shopping cart up and down the aisles, quickly pressing the brake when she encounters a likely suspect. Other shoppers aren\u2019t as wise or as lucky as I am. They get caught and, I suppose of out politeness, they stay and pretend to listen. The really uninitiated offer small comments, trapping themselves for more.<\/p>\n
Bless her heart. She must be so lonely that shopping at Kroger is her social event of the day. Some days, grocery shopping is my big event. But I don\u2019t stop everyone I see and tell them my life history. I speak only to friends and to my favorite cashier, people I\u2019m sure are interested in me. Understanding where she\u2019s coming from doesn\u2019t compel me to become her Kroger friend. Instead, she goes into my idea file.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not a fiction writer, but if I do become one, I\u2019ve amassed a wealth of material in the aisles at Kroger.<\/p>\n
Another example jumped out in frozen foods. Two women were standing in front of an door open with cold air swirling above, around and below them while one offered her definitive opinion of some man. \u201cHe\u2019s no good. He\u2019s never been any good. And he never will be any good.\u201d (Those words are copyrighted by me!) A whole novel smolders within these words.<\/p>\n
One of my favorite novels is Homer and Langley<\/em> by E.L. Doctorow. Two elderly brothers, one suffering from being gassed in World War I and the other going blind, live together. This makes an unbelievably gripping story. I regularly see Homer and Langley at Kroger on what once was Senior Citizen Discount Day, two elderly men shopping together. I don\u2019t know if they are brothers, friends or partners, and their names are certainly not Homer and Langley. But to me, that\u2019s who they are, and as I shop, my mind takes off, creating a world for them, wondering about their true story.<\/p>\n One day in the dairy aisle I realized I was in the middle of a pick up\u2014and it wasn\u2019t for a quart of milk. An older man to my right was talking to a somewhat younger woman on my left, or rather he was peppering her with questions\u2014what did she do? Did she have children? Did they live with her? (Hum!) He did offer one bit of information about himself. He was retired, but he wasn\u2019t really that<\/em> old, so he said.<\/p>\n Making my own dairy selection took a while because I wanted to stay in this novel. She gave him her phone number. And no, her children don\u2019t live with her. But I don\u2019t know how the story ended.<\/p>\n Panic unrelated to writing hit me. Is this what finding dates comes to for the elderly? I\u2019m married, but what if I were not? How would I find dates, assuming I wanted them? And anyway, I’m not that<\/em> old.<\/p>\n Oh, dates are on Aisle 6 with all the canned fruit. Or maybe just search throughout the store?<\/p>\n If I ever write fiction, I\u2019m going to hang out everyday at Kroger. Or maybe I\u2019ll check out some other chains and a few independents. Wonder if you get better stories, fresher stories or more for your money at other stores?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Her voice grabs me as soon as I roll the grocery cart into the store, her life stories wafting up and down the aisles mixing and mingling with the aroma of fresh baked pies, cookies and cakes. No matter where she is in this vast store, I recognize her voice. I work to avoid her…. Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[34,33,13,8,27,6],"class_list":["post-109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-agents","tag-editors","tag-lifestyle","tag-writing","tag-books","tag-home"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jbowrites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jbowrites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jbowrites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jbowrites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jbowrites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.jbowrites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":112,"href":"https:\/\/www.jbowrites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109\/revisions\/112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jbowrites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jbowrites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jbowrites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}