Keep Your Distance! Dammit

Here is Connie's latest experience at the grocery store:

"Gosh. Remember the old days, when nobody wanted to be within ten feet (let alone six) of a trans person*? *Transvestite, in those days.

I was at the grocery store this afternoon to pick up a few essential recipe items for next week's meals. I have always been an excellent shopper - excellent - excellent shopper. A Rainwoman shopper, if you will! :-) I know where everything is (supposed to be) in the stores where I shop, and I make out my lists so that all items are in the same order as the store isles are. I enjoy shopping, but I don't like to waste time wandering, back and forth, from one end of the store and back again. This has now become impossible to achieve, however - not if I'm to maintain social distancing, anyway.

I finally gave up waiting for a woman who was picking through the white mushrooms in the produce section. While I wanted some Criminis, they were right next to the white ones. I went ahead and picked up half-a-dozen other produce items, and, after I'd stood the mandatory six feet away from her, giving her the stink-eye for another few minutes, she finally had the five or six (I assume, best) white mushrooms in the whole bin. Of course, I wouldn't have waited at all, had she touched every one of the mushrooms I wanted. I don't know what the CDC has determined for the virus survival time on mushrooms, but I"m not about to take any chances these days.

So, with all my produce in the cart, I proceeded to the next isle. Who should I see at the far end of it, but the same woman. She was handling jars of pasta sauce this time. I'm not sure what she needed it for, because the shelves were empty of pasta. Perhaps she'd already horded enough pasta, though, but she just didn't think things through on that trip. Well, I suppose I could make my own pasta, but there wasn't any flour on the shelves, either. Fortunately, there was nobody behind me, so I turned around and made a hasty retreat to the next isle over. That's where I confronted the next crazy woman shopper.

I'm usually happy to see another woman who is taller than am I. I also appreciate a shopper who does not linger like the first woman. This woman's technique, however, was to park her cart in the middle of the aisle, and then run around, grabbing as much as she could hold in her big hands (her hands were as big as mine, too!), and dump everything in her parked cart...then back for more. Again, impossible to keep social distancing.

So, no trans woman should be concerned about being read, clocked, of judged for being trans in the grocery store these days. Everybody else in the store is too much into whatever it is that they're doing these days. I may give you the stink-eye if you don't know how to shop, though! 8-)"

You won't have to worry about me! I stay out of everyone's way. I am not so sure of Liz though :)


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