You see it so often now: men walking though the grocery store with their cell phones pressed to their ear, calling in to home base for directions and details.
What kind of lettuce? Iceberg or Manoa?
What kind of milk? Two percent or skim?
What flavor coffee? Vanilla Mac Nut or Kona Sunrise?
The cheese by the milk or the cheese by the deli?
What kind of peanut butter? Skippy or Jif?
Wait, wait … Skippy creamy or Skippy chunky?
What did those guys do before cell phones? Probably go home with bags full of bad guesses. Probably face withering domestic berating for poor grocery judgment. Probably wander the aisles in desperation trying to make out a list written in ballpoint scrawl on the back of a crumpled old envelope.
There was a time when the grocery store was largely a no-man’s-land. If you saw a dude in there, he was just grabbing a six-pack and some boiled peanuts for the party; at most, things ready to eat, not pushing a cart filled with … ingredients.
There also was a time when a man dare not be seen asking for help or instruction. Better to stay silent and be thought a dude than to speak up, ask a question and be seen as clueless.
But that has changed, dramatically and for the better. Now, nobody really cares who’s watching or listening. A man can walk with his head held high and his voice ringing out across the store: “What kind? Huh? What kind is that? What color is the package?” There is no sense of embarrassment that he is someone’s Errand Man, Grocery Guy, Check-So-You’re-Sure-The-Eggs-Aren’t-Broken Boy. He has to make the purchase, but he can’t make the decision and he doesn’t care who knows. It is not a mark against his wholeness or his personhood.
Perhaps it was the invention of the cell phone and the proliferation of private conversations in public that helped these guys break free. Now, yakking on a phone in a store is a perfect cover for the awkwardness of being alone.
Who knows? Maybe he’s faking the whole thing. Maybe he’s pretending there’s an exacting, persnickety domestic partner on the other end who is telling him what to buy. Maybe he actually lives alone but just wants people to think he has someone at home who knows the difference between fusilli and rotini.
After all, if someone is telling you specifically which brand and flavor of soy milk to buy, it tells the world that you are special. Or something.
The man with the grocery basket and the cell phone is the new face of liberation. He’s not afraid to do what he must to get what he needs. He’s not ashamed to ask for direction and clarification. He will not go hungry. He will not suffer through the wrong kind of cheese. He will be exact in his fulfillment and he will eat well.
Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.
