"Food City"

Have you ever had a near death experience? I have and I’ll never forget that day as long as I live. Let me start from the beginning.

It was Saturday in the middle of August and the temperature was somewhere in the 90’s. I was working as a bag boy at Food City. The white shirt, tie, and regulation navy blue slacks and red polyester vest were not helping me a bit to keep cool. At Food City we did something that most grocery stores had long since stopped doing: taking customers’ groceries out to the car. I was in and out all day. I would make a trip out to a car and swelter in the heat and then come back inside all sweaty and nearly freeze in the climate controlled store. The temperature stayed a constant 68 degrees.

I begged and pleaded with Freddy, the store manager, to let me take my polyester vest off to be just a tad cooler while outside. The thing didn’t fit me anyway. I was a little over six feet tall and the vest was made for someone about five-feet-six, so there was about six inches of starched white shirt under my vest before my navy blue dress slacks met them. I absolutely hated that uniform. It did nothing to impress the girls.

Freddy finally gave in but said I still needed to wear a name tag. He was a stickler about name tags. You had to wear one whether it had your name on it or not. My name was sewn on my vest so he printed one out and laminated it for me and I clipped it on my tie.

I was talking to the cashier, Wendy. Wendy was a nice enough girl but she had a face that made her look like she was once woken up with a shovel. It had to be the flattest face I had ever seen and her red hair just added to her unique look.

I was talking to Wendy and this 4 1/2foot tall little old lady came through with her order. She was a typical Food City customer: between 90-110 years old with blue hair, wearing a paisley dress and had a hand knitted shawl around her shoulders.(Geez, it’s about 150 degrees outside and she’s wearing a shawl.) Imagine Granny from “The Beverly Hillbillies” dressed for church. Now add twenty years to her and you just about have the right look. Anyway, she bought the same things every blue haired old lady in our little town bought: flour, lard, bacon, dry beans, coffee, buttermilk and 5 or 6 pouches of chewing tobacco and a single pack of cigarettes. While the old geezer was out of line getting a newspaper I made the joke to Wendy that the cigarettes are for after sex. She had to bite her tongue to keep from laughing. (Attention shoppers: we are making fun of you to make our day go by faster.)

So, I bag her stuff up and follow her out to her car. She walked so slowly that I thought her buttermilk would be out of date before she got there. We walk up beside this mile long mid-seventies model Lincoln (the smaller the old lady the bigger the car is the general rule). The color was something I like to call “Old Lady Green”. I swear I believe you had to show proof that you were drawing Social Security before a car dealer could sell you a car painted with that exact shade of light green. You’ll never convince me otherwise.

She opens the trunk for me and gets in behind the wheel. I load three bags of groceries in a trunk big enough to hold a full 4 by 8 sheet of plywood and slam the trunk lid. I take a step back toward the buggy and the lid flies back up. I slam it again...and again it flies up. Third time’s a charm. With both hands I grab the trunk lid, and putting my full weight on it I slam it down. This time I got it but when I stepped back to get the buggy I couldn’t raise my head. My tie was caught in the trunk!

I beat the trunk lid with my hands and yell: “Excuse me, ma’am.” I was a little embarrassed but wasn’t too concerned until I heard the engine start up. Oh no! She thought I was signaling her to pull out!

I started beating and yelling frantically. “Ma’am!” “Lady!” “STOP!” I knew I was about to be killed in some kind of tragic grocery bagging accident. I was beating so hard both my forearms were bruised for a week afterward. I had to have pounded dents in that trunk lid.

I could picture the headline featured in the Review(our local newspaper): “Bag boy drug to his death by neck tie, local senior citizen charged with vehicular homicide”.

My life flashed before my eyes when I felt the car go into gear and start to pull away. It was sad. I had never been to the ocean, gotten my driver's license, or even attended a rock concert yet. I had a girlfriend but we weren’t even at second base thus far. I had so much left to live for. It can’t end like this!, was the last thought that went through my mind before my clip-on tie, still hung in the trunk and holding my name tag, ripped the top two buttons off my shirt.

For a moment I just stood there, breathing heavy. Man that was intense! I thought I was a goner there for a second. I felt cold shivers roll over my body as I walked back in the store.

There I was: out of breath, face pale as a ghost, and my shirt ripped halfway up. I was nearly killed and I knew it. Freddy took one look at me and said “Where’s your name tag?”






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