I set off today to do some grocery shopping for this Thursday, and took with me my two favorite shopping bags -- an ugly green job and my black canvas Cala bag, which is very crappy and has a rent in it, but which is still
my Cala bag and has accompanied me on many productive shopping trips. Tucked into it was a recent purchase that had pleased me, six washable mesh produce bags to be used instead of the plastic produce bags given out at stores. I used four of them, one for apples (for the stuffing), one for onions (ditto), one for oranges (to rub over the turkey) and one for carrots (for tonight's chicken and bread soup.) Two sacks remained tucked inside the Cala bag.
Then, as I was checking out I realized I'd lost my Cala bag.
I repeat, it's a crappy bag, but it's
my bag and besides, it had those two recently purchased, perfectly good mesh bags in it. Dismayed, I informed the proper authorities, then began retracing my steps through the store. There was no sign of either it or the two produce bags.
Except -- yes, that guy in the baseball cap pushing a shopping cart had a
black Cala bag just like mine in his mostly empty cart.
"Excuse me, sir," I said to him. "Did you find that bag? I've lost mine."
"I found it here at Cala," he said, then quickly corrected himself. "I mean I
bought it here."
As he pushed his cart by, I looked suspiciously down at the Cala bag in it, which was lying almost flat, but was pooched out in a highly suspicious manner as though it contained, oh, something rather soft and fluffy... like a couple of squares of folded
gauze mesh.
I stepped into the beer and wine section to plan my next move. Obviously the thing to do was keep an eye on him. If he happened to use two mesh sacks to bag his produce, I was going to confront him. I pictured myself appearing before him, stepping from behind the dried fruit section near the brown onions. "My goodness," i would say coolly, with an air of feigned surprise, "We seem to be on the same page. I bought two gauze mesh sacks, just like that the other day..."
If he were too wily for this, I would stake out the checkout line and note the behavior of whoever bagged his purchases in that ill-gotten Cala bag. "What's this," the teenaged girl with the nose-ring would say, pulling out the bags, and then I would spring into action. (This tendency to pounce suddenly, confounding evil-doers with an air of deceptively calm insouciance is why I am widely known among my colleagues as "the Panther of the Events Department.")
For ten minutes I tailed, him, waving in and out of shelves, keeping track of his movements. As I did so, I noted that numerous other shoppers had green shopping bags like mine -- nobody except for him had the vintage
black Cala bag.And then, I tipped my hand. A miscalculation in the candy section resulted in my stepping directly into his path.
We stood for a moment. Our eyes met. I believe at that moment we understood each other.
I walked past him, pretending to look at the discount bags of mini Butterfingers, but as I glanced over my shoulder, I could see him turning towards produce, which was just two rows down. I had him at last!
When I looked discreetly around the corner at the other end, I could see him by the sale yams, but it was hard to make out exactly what he was doing. With the silent, gliding step that has earned me the nickname “The Phantom of the Events Department,” I hurried down the aisle to the other end and emerged. He’d moved on to broccoli and cauliflower and, his back to me was pulling down some of those filmy plastic bags.
There, resting on the scale near the yams, were my two mesh produce bags. I pocketed them and left.
There was no sense in being vindictive about it. Two evenly matched foes had met and each had come away with something. It was enough that he recognized this.
It’s that stubborn resolve and tenacity of mine that causes my colleagues to refer to me as “the Bulldog of the Events Department.”
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