bad bad lights

I’d like to narrow myself down to one grocery store. At the moment I have 3 1/2, which include Giant, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, and sometimes Safeway.

Today I went to Giant. We sorely needed cereal. Why, I wondered as I pushed along from cat food to Lactaid, do I always discover, halfway through Giant, that I’m feeling sorry for myself? And, I’ll tell you what, I really hate that feeling. Not so much because--well, who wants to feel that way?--but because I neither admire nor aspire to moods of that sort. It occurred to me that it doesn’t happen in Whole Foods. It doesn’t happen in Trader Joe’s. In fact, I usually leave those venues feeling pretty good about life and how I’m doing with it.

I think it’s the light. I think it’s all the nasty fluorescent lights which gives the place an overly-bright, garish feel.

The Holiday Inn Express we stayed in in Abingdon was fully lit with compact fluorescents. It looked bright. It looked clean. But it still gave me the unsettling sense that I was in a weird place between asleep and awake where images are stark and soap opera characters wielding brightly-colored, cheaply made, carnival prize stuffed animals might charge into the room at any moment just to weird me out. I don’t like that feeling. Animals that rip at the seams after you whack your brother one mere time should not be.

But Giant and its ilk have that affect on me. Icky seasonal yard figurines--bleck. Endcaps of blue and pink cereal--bleck. Circular racks of books with titles like He Has Long Hair and My Blouse is Too Small or Word Search Fun for Christian Wives--bleck.

It may be true that Whole Foods is overpriced and--at least around here--peopled with well-coiffed women Doing the Right Thing for their families. But there are at least enough Earth-mothers to keep it almost in balance. As for Trader Joe’s...Sure, you have to watch those expiration dates. If you buy a pie with a last-sale date of 3 days ago, well caveat emptor, and if you can’t tell that those cherries are past their prime then you probably should stick to frozen. But, when they’re good, they’re good, cheap, interesting, and not horrifically illuminated. But watch out for that place in the frozen aisle where you can so easily get wedged between a structural column and the taquitos. And watch out for the lady who shops in pantyhose, thinking that they’re leggings. And try not to be standing next to the ship’s bell when someone calls for a price check. Otherwise...I think I may be due for a trip there.