The other night I was going to Whole Foods to buy dinner. As
usual, the parking lot was moving at a crawl (that place is always
packed). I was behind a volvo station wagon and this volvo wasn't
moving at all. At first I thought it was because the volvo was
waiting for a car to unpark, but then it still didn't move.
Seriously annoyed, I pulled around the volvo, and took the space
that had opened up right in front of it. As I was parking, I heard
honking. When I got out of my car, this middle-aged woman who had
just gotten out of the volvo started berating me, loudly, in a German
accent. Why had I taken this parking place? Where was my decency?
Who did I think I was? All in rapid-fire succession, and with no
letup. As I got to the entrance, she grabbed a basket and shouted
"You want a basket? Here, take mine! Take it!" So I did. She
grabbed a second basket and said "You want another? Take this one
too!" I said "No, thanks, one's enough" and went into the store.
Since I'm a wimp, this had sent me into adrenaline overload. I
tried to shop but felt jangly, half expecting the woman to show up
again, possibly with store management in tow. I rushed through the
store, but as I was finishing up at the salad bar, a middle-aged man
approached me, and he too began berating me in a German accent. I
spent a moment pondering whether it was possible I had made a bad
parking decision. Then I asked him: "That was your wife getting out
of the car, right? So how could I know you weren't just dropping her
off?" He looked at me for a second or so, then walked off
indignantly.
This is upper middle-class urban warfare at its worst. Maybe if
Whole Foods'd lower the price on their organic tomatoes, or get some
tilapia back in stock, we could see peace in our time. Until then,
we'd all do well to keep an eye out for acts of terrorism: the bag of
overpriced dried figs subtly dropped into our cart, or even the
insidious substitution of regular vegetable samosas for
wheat-free.