Real America

We are in our second week of living like real Americans, as opposed to New Yorkers, and there are positives and negatives. On the positive side, we're in a house! With rooms! And, even more exciting: stairs! At night we can see stars. When we get hot we can walk down to the river and jump in. On the negative side: we're in the car a lot. Need dinner? Get in the car. Need diapers? Get in the car. And on the in-between side we have supermarkets.

I always forget that the rest of the country lives in a world of huge, shiny food repositories where you can choose between seventeen varieties of microwave popcorn. In New York the supermarkets are dingy and crowded. You have to elbow your way through the aisles and you are always knocking into someone. The carts are mini-sized and baskets are the preferred way of transporting your purchases to the cash register, which is invariable staffed by someone who has much better things to do than ring up your groceries.

The most enjoyable part about visiting a supermarket in Real America is the ability to fling things into your cart willy nilly. I'm pretty certain this is the true reason that people in New York tend to be skinnier than the rest of the country. When you're grocery shopping in New York you have to really, really want those Fritos because you're going to have to schlep them home and up three flights of stairs, at which point you might just say screw it and order Chinese instead. But in Real America there's no deterrent. In fact, you've gone all the way to the supermarket, you've parked the car and dragged the kid out of the car seat and strapped him into the shopping cart, if anything you have earned those Fritos and it would be wrong not to get them.

I forget how easy life in Real America is. There are no upstairs neighbors who have purchased their three-year-old a really loud toy that goes kablam directly above your head every three minutes; there are no people shoving you on the sidewalk, no sirens and no flocks of snappily dressed women carrying the exact same handbag-of-the-moment. There is quiet and a sense of ease, but there is also a sort of lethargy that comes from not having to work too hard at anything. Suddenly I find myself deciding to watch television instead of read because I left my book upstairs again and who wants to go all the way back upstairs? This is also the only reason I can come up with for why people don't return their shopping carts at the supermarket. Because they are tired from all that easy living. And all those Fritos.