Desperate Housewives

You know what I hate? When people scrutinize my groceries. Not only is this a violation of my personal space, but it invites small talk. And I HATE small talk. Today, the nosy woman in line in front of me began perusing my goods as I loaded them onto the conveyor belt. She eventually pointed her nosy-ass finger toward some aspect of my groceries, shaking her head up and down in approval like we were kismet-ically related soulmates or something. I tried to ignore her, but there is no ignoring busy bodies.

"Interesting," she murmured. I didn't know what she was referring to, but I was certainly glad that it was canned food week and not toiletry week.

"Gardenburger wraps, eh?" She was begging for attention, any kind of attention.

"Yes," I conceded, my good samaritan deed for the week. Entertained a lonely housewife, I'd write on my good deeds calendar.

"Interesting that you eat that those when you're not even a vegetarian," she said. At this point, I was ready to poke her in the eyeballs. The last thing I needed to do was to justify my purchases and my dietary trends to some meddling house-frau!

"Actually, I am vegetarian," I justified, because I needed to set the record straight.

"Oh..." she said, as if she'd just busted me in a lie. Then she paused.... "because...well... I see you have bacon bits."

She thought she'd outted me -- revealed my meat-eating ways to the entire line of housewives in aisle 8. I whipped the bottle of bacon bits around and pointed out the ingredient list.

"What most meat eaters don't know," I advised, while my pointer finger ran across the top line of ingredients, a Vanna White-type maneuver that added punch to my presentation, "is that store-bought bacon bits are exclusively made from soy."

Phew. Now she could go back to minding her own business. I had gotten the best of her, set her straight, ended the debate... or so I thought.

"Too much soy is bad for you," she whined, while I tried to conjure up some of the life-ending karate maneuvers I'd learned in my year of taking Judo in college. "I used to eat a lot of it, and it started really messing up my periods."

Oooooooooookay. When you're in line at the grocery store conversing with perfect strangers on menses-related themes, you fully understand the meaning of the word "surreal." As the checkout lady leisurely scanned the items of the many other chatty, desparate housewives in front of me, I had to listen to how this previous soy-eater endured excessive bleeding, bloated ovaries, irregular cycles and many other equally enthralling pre-menopausal symptoms. AND IT WAS ALL BECAUSE OF SOY, she made sure to remind me.

After Chatty Kathy finally bought her groceries and moved along, I had a few minutes to myself. I found myself considering whether I should return to eating meat. I mean, come on, nobody wants to change a tampon every half hour and that's that this woman promised I was in store for! But after a second or two, I realized that to start eating meat might make me NOSY and MEDDLESOME and SNOOPY and FRICKIN ANNOYING and pretty soon I'd start accosting perfect strangers with private restroom stories that nobody should have to hear. No thanks. Pass me the soynuts!