I was on aisle 4, thumbing through the boxes of Captain Crunch, trying to find the one that had the sweetest toy inside.  It was a Thursday afternoon in mid March — almost Spring, but not quite.  But that didn’t matter, spring fever was setting in anyway.

While most people in the store, including my mom, were purchasing cleaning supplies for their grand spring cleaning adventures they had planned for that weekend, I was searching for meaning.  In a cereal box.

I wasn’t aware of this at the time.  As far as I was concerned, I simply wanted an awesome whistle or maze.  Or maybe even some temporary tattoos.  I was seven years old, hardly aware of my own male attributes, much less my existentialist feelings.  But deep down inside, I wanted something more from that box of Captain Crunch.  I wanted something more than just an awesome view finder or mini Etch-a-Sketch.  I wanted significance.

I finally stumbled across a box with a miniature Where’s Waldo? book inside and concluded that that was going to be my best bet.

I set off down the cereal aisle to find my mom.  I walked by the dairy section and noticed the leaky jugs of milk and styrofoam cartons of cracked eggs, dripping with yellow and clear goo.  I wondered who would be unfortunate enough to purchase one of these egg cartons due to their lack of common sense.  I felt sorry for them.  Then I laughed and continued to look for my mom.

I looked down every aisle twice, but didn’t see her.

I tried not to panic.  Instead, I decided to do what I learned from one of my Sesame Street books — stay in one location and wait for my mom to find me.  I sat down in the middle of aisle 7, because I was that many years old.  My mom was certainly not going to miss me there.

I wanted to make the most of my time while I was waiting.  So I opened the box of Captain Crunch and dug through the cereal for the Where’s Waldo? book.  I pulled it out and began to search for Waldo, page by page.  I found him pretty easily in the carnival scene amongst the clowns and elephants.  The airport scene was a little more difficult due to all the holiday travelers.  And the Coliseum scene was proving to be nearly impossible.

I spent several minutes scanning over gladiators dressed in red & white striped armor who were fighting lions wearing red & white fur coats.  Everyone and everything was red & white.  But no matter how hard I looked, I couldn’t find Waldo.

I started to panic.  I couldn’t find Waldo.  My mom hadn’t found me.  And subconsciously, I was upset that I hadn’t found my significance.  I was lost.

And then, as I stared at the can of kidney beans in front of me, it hit me.

I was Waldo.  I may not have been wearing red & white everything, carrying a canteen and a camera, or holding a cane, but I was Waldo.  The grocery store was a spread in a giant Where’s Waldo? book and my mom was searching the pages for her Waldo.

Right now, some one is buying a box of Nilla Wafers.

You must really like your life.  You must have some kind of passion for the things that make up your days.  Evenly-lit office suites.  Late model Chevy Aveos driven by the partially college-educated.  A cold sun.  The smells of burning carbons.

I know this because there are grocery stores in Hawaii.  It is not some impossible place, some Borneon jungle that lacks basic facilities and civilization.  In fact, Hawaii, from my understanding of it, is a lot like where you live.  It’s a state in the country you were (probably) born in.  There are plenty of little townships, small enough that any college educated, hardworking person would have no trouble living modestly, but large enough that there are legitimate grocery stores, places that sell toilet paper and maple syrup and olive oil.

If you didn’t love your life so damn much, you could move there tomorrow.  Lahaina.  Pahai.  They’re out there, smelling of chlorophyl and sea salt and an obsidian newness that your sands lack.

But you will not go.  You love your life too much.  Whatever you are doing, whoever you are with, you must treasure them enough to reject paradise.  You choose to buy your things at the Kroger down the road, the one near Super Wraps and SuperCuts and Hollywood Video and Lowes.  You love these more than volcano shadows.

But I don’t know why.

It was the summer of 2000.  The millennium had just hit and the world was still here.  Y2K had decided not to ruin our computers, hospitals or schools.  Since that was the case and since I was sixteen years old, I needed a job.  So, for eight dollars an hour I went to work at the grocery store up the street from my house.  I had applied to be a bag boy.  I got hired to be a bag boy.  I got trained to be a bag boy.

I got put to work as a cashier.

No training. No help.  Just hundreds of kinds of produce and lines of people screaming.  What was I supposed to do with checks?  Did you want cash back?  No, I do not know where the Spanish Almonds are, Sir.  Please go fuck yourself on aisle seven.

This particular store was a hot bed for the MILFs of the surrounding affluent neighborhood.  It was great for my sixteen year-old imagination, but at times it felt like I was pledging the junior league.  I always got scheduled on weekday afternoons.  They would line up with their items, always dressed as if aerobics were at least a possibility.

Due to my own ignorance (and lack of training) my register would always lock up, and Latasha, my only friend at work, would have to come and key in the correct weight and price for the piece of produce I had scanned incorrectly.  The concept of this particular store was that it was an “express”.  Since worthless irony doesn’t outweigh eight dollars an hour, the job fucking sucked.

Everyday I would put on my teal shirt, drag myself up there and listen to the three African-American women I worked with laugh at me for being a virgin.  I tried to convince them otherwise, but they said they could tell by my face.  One of them said it was, “the way I put my seatbelt on.”  They gave me tips that came in the form of complaints for ways “they wish they got it”.  I told them thanks, but that the girl I dated didn’t like Boyz II Men or honey.

My manager was a cross between Lou Diamond Phillips and a limousine driver.  He always walked like he was in a hurry and was always humming Bruce Springsteen underneath his breath.  It didn’t drive me crazy until we had to stock an aisle together.  Doesn’t sound that bad huh?  Try stocking eighteen cartons of Pringles with every tube being handed to you with a monotone track sampling from Darkness on the Edge of Town.  To this day I can’t hear “Badlands” without picturing 84 individuals canisters of Cheez Ums.

Halfway through the summer, my only casualties were my affinity for the Boss, the possibility I would ever listen to Boyz II Men again and my ability to consume any honey products.

Then, came the peritonsillar abscess.

I called into work and told them I thought I had gotten poison ivy in my throat.  Two days later I had lost ten pounds and was spitting up blood constantly.  My mom and I went to the ENT for a consultation and the doctor had to get a ratchet to open my jaw because the swelling had gotten so bad.  As if that didn’t hurt enough, he proceeded to, without giving me any anesthesia, stick a pair of dull scissors into the back of my throat and pierce the ever tender, ever puss-filled abscess.  He then stuck a suction tube deep into it and sucked out what I thought looked like banana gravy.

I sat there and, like all tough sixteen year-olds eager to lose their virginity, held my mom’s hand and cried buckets of hot tears that were in dry pools on my cheeks as we exited the office.

I would spend the next two weeks bed ridden, recovering from a surgery that can be described as “slightly post-western frontier”.  I ate a bunch of pain pills, drank a bunch of ICEEs and watched a copious amount of The Price is Right and the British Open (Tiger Woods won).

Then, one Sunday night as I was screaming at my brother over a video game, my parents said, “you look like you’re in pretty good shape to go back to work.”  I couldn’t argue with them.  My run had ended.

I walked back upstairs and looked at my nametag.  It hadn’t moved its place on my desk in three weeks.  It brought me back to months prior, when the customer service lady had slammed it out on the label maker- CHARLS.   Since it had been my first day at my first job, I hadn’t spoken up to tell her she had misspelled it.  I thought it was funny and we all made jokes about it.  But now, the nametag had taken on a different form.  It felt like more like a bad contract – more like a prison cell number.

In the stillness of my head a slow monotone version of “Dancing in the Dark” started to play.  I took my last pain pill, crawled into bed and secretly wished that another abscess would fill my throat while I slept.

The grocery store is one of the few places that everyone, in one way or another, has in common.  Everyone has to eat, and while food does grow on trees not any of the trees grow in my neighborhood.  The thing is, every time I go to the grocery store I literally have no idea what I’m going in for.  I just show up with the goal of “FOOD”.  Every time I step in that door it’s like a choose your own adventure novel from when we were kids.  There are enumerable options, countless branches and splinters of my own possible Odyssean Epicurian Journey.  I’ve taken the pleasure of writing a choose your own adventure novella of sorts.  Enjoy and choose wisely.  Not all of the choices lead to positive outcomes… Don’t fail.

You walk into the grocery store.  You’ve been to this store a thousand times if you’ve been one, yet you never seem to feel at ease.  This time is no different.  The homeless man at the door asked you for money like he does every other time you come to this grocer.  You wonder why he doesn’t have more gainful employment with such a strong verbal skill-set.  He has no problem punching through your proposed reasoning for not giving him money every time you come.  Today you told him you “don’t have any cash” as as walked in.  He promptly reminded you that “you can get cash back at the register, you can hit me up on the way out.”   You’re contemplating offering him a job instead of money when the hunger pang hits.  You haven’t eaten lunch and you want to get in and out of this store so you can go home and eat.

You meander the aisles somewhat at a loss.  There are countless options before You.  The myriad of americanized-cultural experiments from curry concoctions to pan-thai to saeurkraut overwhelm.  All you can think about is the guy out front waiting for you.  You are feeling more and more anxious about it and finally you just decide.

Click To Choose Your Dinner…

Frozen Pizza and High Life
Caesar Salad
Tacos
Steak and Potatoes
Capn’ Crunch and Fried Chicken
Steamed Asparagus, Free Range Chicken Breast, Jasmine and a Spirulina Shake