This morning, I traversed to the grocery. A journey of epic proportions. The grocery store always seems to line up that way, anyhow. This morning though, it was mostly deserted. In fact, besides the worker bees, I did not see another grocer the entire time I shopped.
That is, until I went to check out. There might have been four of us in the entire store. Three of us converged on the cashier at once. No matter that I was third. It gave me time to scan the tabloid headlines.
There were the usuals suspects. Alien abductions. Mutant babies with three belly buttons. Elvis sightings.
But then they hit the celebrities.
So.
In case you haven’t noticed, here is the most recent news. Apparently, Ellen Degeneres had some pals over to her house to play poker. She got all mean and ugly on them, in various ways, according to the National Enquirer. I guess she drew a Straight Flush, and it was just too much for her.
No. Seriously. Who can blame her? Cards are a serious matter for some. I like playing Poker, but just for fun. I learned at an early age. Seven, or so. My Grandpa Wehrman taught me. As I recall, I won a great deal of the time. I suspect now, that I was not a Seven-Year-Old-Poker-Prodigy. It just wasn’t in the cards. But it WAS in the love of a grandfather.
Next in the tabloid-ish. Barbra Streisand cloned her dog. Samantha. A Coton du Tulear. The NatEnq said she had a bunch of seances, trying to connect with Sam. No word from the netherworld. So when you can’t connect with Madame McDermit the Mystic, do the obvious. Clone your dog. The next best thing to being there. The next best thing to being there.
Had I know this was a doable deal, I would have cloned my beloved Frances. Except for two things. First the price tag. $50,000. I think a lot of shelter pets would benefit more from 50K, than any one person could benefit from cloning a dog. Secondly, it would be my luck that the cloning process would turn all Stephen King. Yep. Frances, Saint Frances in the first life. Satan Frances in the second? I am not willing to put that kind of gamble on the Cujo Factor.
Back in line at the grocery. The man in front of me carefully unloaded the groceries from his cart, in a most neat and orderly fashion. I couldn’t help but notice everything lined up perfectly on the conveyer belt. Upon closer inspection, I notice that all of his items were in boxes. Mostly, he had jello. All sorts of flavors and assortments. Then there were a few meals in boxes, like Mac and Cheese, and Rice-a-Roni. Crackers. Cereal. Boxes. All lined up. Tall to short.
I am not sure what to make of that. Perhaps, I was finally in the midst of someone more OCD than I. Maybe.
At any rate, the Grocery Store Journey proved, once again, to be interesting and informative. It made me consider many things. Like playing mean-poker, cloning dogs, and buying mass quantities of Jell-O, all have one thing in common. All three stories reminded me that, if we look closely, we can find love in everything. A grandfather’s love for his granddaughter. A woman’s love for her dog. And the guy with the lined-up boxes? Well. I guess we all have our quirks. And what’s not to love about that?
Where ever we go, and whatever we do, we should try to look for the love, I suppose. Even if it means thinking outside the box.
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“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.”
― Elie Wiesel
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“Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold.”
― Zelda Fitzgerald
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“What’s meant to be will always find a way”
― Trisha Yearwood
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