David Ends Up on the Wrong Side of Responsibility

Sometimes - not often, but sometimes - I make brief forays into the life of a responsible adult; rare, bright, shining glimmers of hope for what-could-be and what-never-was. Suffice to say, between June 4th and this very afternoon, I maintained my longest unbroken streak to date of fairly responsible actions. Then, as always, reality caught up with me.

I was doing so well, too. I got an apartment in the District, paid the vast majority of the rent out of my own pocket, made myself meals, began thinking about utilities without my mind automatically referring to a Monopoly board, got myself a job in which I was entrusted with the care of small children, considered doing laundry occasionally. And then I made my fatal mistake: I ran out of food. Faced with the prospects of starving to death or going grocery shopping, I decided - as a responsible adult would - that spending money was slightly less terrifying a fate than dying.
So I gathered up the courage to go to the grocery store.
I Googled which grocer was closest, and came upon the good old trusty neighborhood Tenleytown Safeway, apparently on the very street which I live. Unfortunately for me, Fort Reno Park runs through that street, so I have to mosey around that to get where I'm going. I get to the Safeway, find everything I need just fine, head to the register, pay the $40 over 2 credit cards like a responsible human being, and tell them to go ahead and plastic bag my foodstuffs. Damn the DC Plastic Bag Tax, full speed ahead.

And full speed ahead I went. While in the store, I'd decided that the only way for me to take 3 bags of groceries and a gallon of chocolate milk home was by stealing the shopping cart, although once I got outside and started to take off, my conscience got the better of me. I left the cart behind (despite the fact that it was just DC chillin' by itself on the sidewalk in front of the Safeway, the momentousness of the fact that I was leaving my faithful cart behind got the better of my common sense), grabbed two bags in one hand, one more and the gallon of chocolate milk in the other, and took off. They felt good in my hands; I figured I could make it. As I got to Wisconsin and Davenport, I got a nice little red light to rest at. I put the bags down, waited for the cross light to turn yellow, picked them back up, and crossed the street. Not so bad.

As I get to Fort Reno Park, I notice one of the bags is destroying my arm. I readjust. Everyone's doing okay. I go up the little gravelly path through Fort Reno Park, which goes uphill for a bit. After mounting this summit, I breathe easy; it's all downhill from here, I remind myself. I get to Davenport and Nebraska, and I get another rest at a red light, where I notice my bread is taking a beating and I try to fluff it up a little. Two more blocks, and I am quite literally home free. I'm struggling. I feel like a prisoner dragging chains made of food through suburban DC. The bags' handles are cutting into the point where my thumb and wrist connect, and I'm beginning to consider what a waste of amputation it would be if I lost my thumb carrying groceries home. I can feel each bead of sweat forming between my shoulder blades - I can tell you now what a strange feeling it is to only be aware of the sweat on your back. I'm walking like those guys on World's Strongest Man competitions do when they're dragging 9 billion pound airplanes behind them. I get a final rest at Davenport and Reno. I prepare for glory.

I cross Reno Rd., get past the playground at Murch Elementary, and suddenly my load gets significantly lighter on one side followed quickly by a loud thump. I look down, expecting the worst, only to find my Juicy Juice lying helplessly on the sidewalk, staring those innocent fruit-punch-colored eyes at me, begging me, imploring me to not leave him to the dogs. On a scale of 1 to real, shit has just gotten real. My Juicy Juice hasn't exploded yet, however, so I figure I'm lucky. I just have to figure out a way to get my Juicy Juice home without a bag to put it in. What follows is the first in a series of perfectly resourceful decisions pertaining to the survival of this Juicy Juice. Namely, I start kicking it down the street.

I do this until I reach 36th St., where I notice a pedestrian staring at me like I was holding three bags of groceries and a gallon of chocolate milk and kicking a full bottle of Juicy Juice down the street or something. Under such harsh scrutiny, I decide to alter my arrangement. I re-fluff my bread, put some pasta into the frozen foods bag, and put the Juicy Juice into the pasta bag. I'm practically on my stoop.

As I climb the stairs, I notice a woman coming up the other end, fumbling for her keys. Upon realizing my hands are full she opens the door for me. I walk in ahead of her. Crossing the threshold, I go down another man: the bread jumps ship, landing right across the doorway, and the woman behind me, not realizing the full extent of the slapstick farce which she'd just unwittingly entered into, steps her left workin' heel about 3/5ths of the way down the length of the loaf.*

She freaks out, thinking she just ruined my bread, but I calm her down by explaining that it was pretty destroyed anyways. She offers help, which I decline. I'm confident I can find a place to stash this bread, provided the carrots don't slip through my grasps as well. Ah, hubris.

As I'm picking up the bread, a man begins fumbling for his keys outside, and I open the door for him. He sees my struggle and asks if I need help; what an absurd notion. I finally feel comfortable to take up camp again and take two more steps, before I hear the faint tink of glass on carpet and feel the now-all-too-familiar lightening of my load. I look down behind me, only to see Bertolli's Tomato and Basil sauce lying in the same helpless position in which I'd once seen my Juicy Juice lying. I start seeing flashbacks of my poor Juicy Juice lying wounded in front of the southern facade of Murch Elementary, and enter into a state of panic. Two bags down, three separate groceries covered in dust and tears. I throw everything out of the bags in an attempt to rearrange them again, but fitting 3+ bags worth of groceries into a single unbroken bag proves difficult. Now every piece of grocery I own is lying strewn about my person - my Pepperoni Pizza Lean Pockets cowering underneath my Hungry Man Boneless Fried Chicken dinners; my linguine, rigatoni, and farfalle holding onto one another for dear life, crossing themselves and muttering the rosary over and over again; my 5 lbs. of carrots reduced to tears, having had a front-row seat at both the dribbling of the Juicy Juice down the sidewalk and the macabre high-heeling of the bread on the doorstep and knowing they'll likely end up on the wrong side of a foot as well. Looking at each one, seeing the horrors, the fears, on their faces, I could only sit there in the middle of it all, unable to help them, yet unable to walk away. On a scale of 1 to real, shit has hit the fan. I know when I'm up against the wall. I turn to the man whose offer I just declined and ask him for help. He obliges.

He grabs the chocolate milk, the Hungry Man Boneless Fried Chicken TV dinners, and the sauce. I grab the rest, and we get onto the elevator with the woman who stepped on my bread.
"This is the biggest shitshow I've ever seen coming home," she notes. True story. The guy carrying my stuff leaves everything outside the elevator as I get off on the third floor, and I come to my door and put the groceries I still had in the one usable bag there. I go back to the elevator and get the others. I reach in my pocket for my keys; they aren't there. I try the door. It's unlocked. Well, thank God I can rest easy after having been outside of the apartment for 2 hours without keys with the door unlocked, considering I have no pretense of responsibility to maintain anymore.

I drag everything into the apartment. The frozen foods are thawed, naturally. I put everything where it needs to go, except I leave the Juicy Juice out for examination. It took a pretty rough tumble, and the bottom is a little scraped up. I notice it's leaking ever so slowly from the bottom, so I figure I should find another container for it. As luck would have it, I have no idea how to recycle in this apartment complex, so I have an empty Juicy Juice bottle lying around. Well, I say to the bottle, what's a perfectly good Juicy Juice bottle like you doing on the kitchen floor next to the trash can like this, when I have this guy here that's been beaten half to death trying in vain to keep my Juicy Juice inside its breached containment system? Perfectly resourceful decision #2 ensues. I decide it's best to pour the Juicy Juice from the broken bottle to the used bottle. I look for a funnel, but can't find one. I guess I'll just have to go bareback. Miraculously, the vast majority of the Juicy Juice ends up in the other bottle, and I shove that badboy into the fridge.

I open the carrot bag and pull one out and pour myself a glass of Juicy Juice. Delicious.



*Ed.'s Note: NOT a 3/5ths Compromise joke.