Shopping for the Apocalypse
We're supposed to get a foot or so (depending on whom you listen to) of snow today and tonight. Now, coming as I do from the frozen midwest, and having lived for seven years Upstate, where a foot and a half of snow wouldn't even keep kids home from school, this doesn't much faze me. But we were out of essential items like milk and cat food, so I ventured to the stores as planned this morning.
So did everyone else.
Lines at gas pumps as if this were the 1970s. (For you young'uns, in the '70s gas was cheaper than it is today, but feared to be running out, so you could only buy it on certain days of the week, according to your license plate number, and lines for gas stations frequently stretched into the street. If someone had told us then that there would be two-dollar-a-gallon gas and people would cheerfully fill their negative-miles-to-the-gallon Hummers with it, we would have laughed ourselves silly at the very thought.) No room in the parking lot of the usually not too busy specialty store, and lines down the aisles. No carts to be had at the supermarket, and little on the shelves once one got inside, as frantic Long Islanders piled provisions in their baskets as if expecting not to see daylight until June.
I can just imagine what it must be like at Costco. People are probably backing up their SUVs to the door to fill them with giant crates of bottled water and toilet paper. Oh wait, that's how Costco is all the time.
The fever becomes contagious. At first it's just "well, as long as I'm here anyway..." which segues into "this place is going to be cleaned out so if I need anything I better grab it..." evolving rapidly into "what if the delivery trucks can't make it through to replenish everything Monday? I better stock up!" and a trunk full of groceries, content leaning more toward comfort food than a balanced diet. But then I was never a diligent practitioner of the balanced diet thing anyway.
Now, four hours or so after snow started falling, the streets are dark, silent, and empty, like a post-apocalypse version of suburbia. And I realize I forgot to buy beer. There's a bottle or two of wine downstairs, but the cavedweller-survivalist part of my brain is debating whether I should try to slog over to the liquor store while there's only a few inches of snow on the ground, because liquor can help warm a person should the power cut out, or be useful should we need emergency treatment for infection...
Oh yeah, we have Bactine for that. I guess I can get by on a bottle of cabernet.
This is what happens when you live in a (suburb of a) city where hats are not worn lest they mess the hairdo, and "winter shoes" means a touch of fur trim (faux or real, depending on your politics and economics) on your high-heeled leather mules. Ugg boots? No, those are so over. And anyway, even though it's snowing on Saturday, everything will probably still be closed on Monday so it's not as if anyone will have to go out anywhere.
I should be laughing at these thin-blooded New Yorkers in fear of a good deal less than a yard of snow. (My sister certainly is. Her place gets drifts deep enough that she has to enter and exit the house through a second-floor window, and she still gets out and about.) But I'm kind of liking knowing that there's plenty of peach salsa in the kitchen and I won't have to wear shoes for a couple days. Maybe a hot bath...hmm. I think these New Yorkers are on to something.
So did everyone else.
Lines at gas pumps as if this were the 1970s. (For you young'uns, in the '70s gas was cheaper than it is today, but feared to be running out, so you could only buy it on certain days of the week, according to your license plate number, and lines for gas stations frequently stretched into the street. If someone had told us then that there would be two-dollar-a-gallon gas and people would cheerfully fill their negative-miles-to-the-gallon Hummers with it, we would have laughed ourselves silly at the very thought.) No room in the parking lot of the usually not too busy specialty store, and lines down the aisles. No carts to be had at the supermarket, and little on the shelves once one got inside, as frantic Long Islanders piled provisions in their baskets as if expecting not to see daylight until June.
I can just imagine what it must be like at Costco. People are probably backing up their SUVs to the door to fill them with giant crates of bottled water and toilet paper. Oh wait, that's how Costco is all the time.
The fever becomes contagious. At first it's just "well, as long as I'm here anyway..." which segues into "this place is going to be cleaned out so if I need anything I better grab it..." evolving rapidly into "what if the delivery trucks can't make it through to replenish everything Monday? I better stock up!" and a trunk full of groceries, content leaning more toward comfort food than a balanced diet. But then I was never a diligent practitioner of the balanced diet thing anyway.
Now, four hours or so after snow started falling, the streets are dark, silent, and empty, like a post-apocalypse version of suburbia. And I realize I forgot to buy beer. There's a bottle or two of wine downstairs, but the cavedweller-survivalist part of my brain is debating whether I should try to slog over to the liquor store while there's only a few inches of snow on the ground, because liquor can help warm a person should the power cut out, or be useful should we need emergency treatment for infection...
Oh yeah, we have Bactine for that. I guess I can get by on a bottle of cabernet.
This is what happens when you live in a (suburb of a) city where hats are not worn lest they mess the hairdo, and "winter shoes" means a touch of fur trim (faux or real, depending on your politics and economics) on your high-heeled leather mules. Ugg boots? No, those are so over. And anyway, even though it's snowing on Saturday, everything will probably still be closed on Monday so it's not as if anyone will have to go out anywhere.
I should be laughing at these thin-blooded New Yorkers in fear of a good deal less than a yard of snow. (My sister certainly is. Her place gets drifts deep enough that she has to enter and exit the house through a second-floor window, and she still gets out and about.) But I'm kind of liking knowing that there's plenty of peach salsa in the kitchen and I won't have to wear shoes for a couple days. Maybe a hot bath...hmm. I think these New Yorkers are on to something.
posted by Maines at 3:54 PM
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