City Rhythms

I stepped outside my door Monday and limped two blocks down and two blocks back to run some errands.

On this journey of not so many steps,

- I walked by a young boy who looked exactly. like. Harry. Potter. anxiously waiting for his parents to pick him up.
- I returned a book to the library only to pick up another and remain in book debt.
- I visited at the ATM.  I spend money like water, apparently, always.  Even when mostly housebound.  One would think that they charge me to use the bathroom around here.
- I went to the grocery store.  You might think that 3:30pm on a Monday would be a great time to go to the grocery store.  Nope.  That is when they restock things on all the shelves and cases in all the aisles.  And the aisles were packed with mothers.

Mothers with kids, mothers with baskets, mothers with carts, mothers with babies in slings, mothers on the go, mothers with lists, mother who peruse, mothers who are fed up, mothers who sigh loudly.  Mothers of all kinds.  Wow.  They don't mess around.  I suppose they can't.  But it made limping in their midst seem potentially perilous.

Added to that the older folks pushing their personal carts which serve both as a means to transport and a means to enable transit, gripping the handle with both hands, for dear life, leaning heavily or carefully.

All of us grumbling at those who insist of traversing the aisle against the flow of shoppers, spawning salmon fighting our directional current in search of frozen plantains or imitation crab sticks.  We shake our heads.  This is not the way.  This is not how things are done at this grocery.  Everyone should know that.

This Monday I was the making of a stop motion short.

On gathering my goods, I salsa'd and shambled gratefully home and had broccoli.