stop and shop man
I wanted ice cream, and I wanted it bad. Maybe it was a hormonal craving, but that’s neither here nor there. What matters is that I wanted ice cream and I couldn’t find the slightest glob anywhere in either of the two freezers my parents kept stocked. They had failed me. So, being the emotionally stable adult woman that I am, I cried. I knew I would have to pull it together to drive to the grocery store for ice cream, and I didn’t want to be one of those losers you see crying in the ice cream aisle.
As I walked out to my car I encountered my dad, who half-heartedly asked if I wanted him to go with me. I politely declined because I am an adult woman, if you remember, who didn’t really need any more people to see her cry that day. But my dad continued, “Yeah, I’m not really a Stop and Shop man,” to which I shrugged, got in my car, and drove away. But wait, I’m not a Stop and Shop woman, I thought angrily as I blasted Sia from the speakers of my tiny white Cavalier. I don’t want to be a Stop and Shop woman. I would love it if I never had to step foot in a Stop and Shop ever again! When will I get to proudly declare that I, too, am not a Stop and Shop man?
In my emotional, ice cream deprived state of mind, I couldn’t believe that a human who eats and digests food could boldly declare they do not go into Stop and Shop to retrieve said food. Because I am not a sane person who is able to let anything go, I later asked my dad what he meant when he so vehemently declared that he wasn’t a Stop and Shop man. His reply, as I expected, wasn’t simply that he disliked this particular corporate hub of grocery selections, but instead loathed grocery shopping all together and refused to do it. If I had the same mentality, this delicious ice cream would have never ended up sitting comfortably next to me, atop my bedsheets. The sad truth is that the other women in my father’s life — my mom, his sister, and his mother — have been going to the grocery store for him his entire life. When it wasn’t his mother, it was mine. He’s not a Stop and Shop man because he’s never had to be. He doesn’t like grocery stores because he never had to learn to suck it up in order to get his favorite foods delivered to his plate. A woman in his life always took care of it for him.
Why can’t we all just share in the Stop and Shop duties? We can all be Stop and Shop men and women if we try hard enough. Well most of us anyway. I’ll be the loser crying in the ice cream aisle.
