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One time, one night
Shoppers break norm
By Joe Palmersheim
Published:
Monday, April 26, 2004
Beneath the skin of any city in America, the heart of capitalism thumps strongly, gushing and circulating, keeping the economy afloat with every beat.
So, to find one's self standing outside a grocery store at 11 p.m. on a Thursday night is to witness the fact that the heart beats 24-hours a day, seven days a week.
The reasons people come to the Coborn's on Fifth Avenue South are simple ones: nicotine fix, drunken good idea or just plain loneliness. The first two were easy to spot, but the third was more difficult to discern.
The variety of states people were in made for interesting and somewhat disturbing encounters; one lessen learned: don't back away from a drunk talking to you- they'll take it as a hint to come closer.
"We're here to get donuts and orange juice," Mark Wallner said, standing next to his friend Danny Salmer.
When asked where they'd rather be, Salmer contemplated for a second and said, "A party. Definitely a party." With that, they sauntered off into the night.
A crowd followed soon after, consisting of three males and a lone female. When asked what they were up to, the woman replied, "Honestly, do you want to know? We're at Coborn's, we got drunk."
One of the guys near her piped up, saying, "My clothes are cold," with an oddly intense look in his eyes that seemed to make plain his desire for comprehension - perhaps even empathy.
Becky Andruss, an SCSU sophomore, said she was at the store to buy cigarettes. Then, with a dead-pan expression, she continued.
"I'm here for smokes," Andruss said. "Smokes and condoms. See, I want to buy condoms and then go to a frat party and have sex with all the football players." Her comment was amusing, the disgusted look on her face reinforced her joke.
The next few patrons gave the standard reason for being at a grocery story. Their collective voices cried, "Can't you see we're drunk?!"
By far, the most interesting thing to come out of the evening came soon after. It was a family of three: a mother, a daughter and a son. The son had a leash in his hand attached to, of all things, a calico cat, which obviously did not want to be there. The cat's complaints fell on deaf ears; the owners were having none of it. They came to get smokes, while the cat took an interest in a journalist's tape recorder, eyeing it like a supermodel eyes a jelly-crawler.
Upon leaving the store, the family (including the boy, who looked about 13), lit up. The mother, intoxicated, talked at length about the cleaning job she once held at SCSU.
"The main reason we were out is because we were walking the cat," she said. "I was at SCSU one year; I was a supervisor for a cleaning crew. The boyfriends are left in the dark, they don't have a clue."
She continued, packing her cigarettes at the same time.
The American family, out walking the cat on the way to buy cigarettes at 11:30 p.m. on a Thursday night.
Just another random encounter in a town that thrives on novelty, walking through life half-dead and blissfully unaware of all that could have been.
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