Around 4:30, as the light was fading outside my living room window, the realization that I hadn’t done my grocery shopping hit me like a ton of bricks. Grocery shopping is easily my most dreaded weekly chore. Everything costs a small fortune, yet is somehow necessary for me to maintain the illusion of a healthy lifestyle. Plus, it was Sunday evening—prime time for sitting on the couch, staring into the void, and quietly panicking about the week ahead.
Luckily, it’s football season, which meant the store was nearly deserted—just me and a handful of equally weary souls who looked like alternate versions of myself. I threw on my oversized jean jacket (official uniform of mind-numbing errands) and adopted my standard strategy: eyes forward, no small talk, complete focus on the cart, its contents, and the thrilling new lineup of holiday coffee roasts.
I soon found myself trailing a middle-aged couple who seemed friendly enough. The man was wearing an Eagles jersey and smiled at me a few times in a distinctly non-creepy, “I’m just happy to be alive” kind of way. I decided his wife had won the lottery—one of the few remaining emotionally available men on earth.
I grabbed my turkey sausage in the freezer aisle; he smiled. I reached for the English muffins; he nodded. At this point, I started wondering if he could somehow smell the faint scent of existential dread wafting from my cart. Maybe he recognized the aura of a person who’d wrestled with her will to live and won—barely. This man, clearly, was performing a quiet act of public service: validating the weary. A true hero.
Naturally, we ended up in the same checkout lane (why are there only two open lanes on a Sunday?). As I loaded my items onto the belt, the Eagles jersey man turned to me and said, “Hello.” I smiled politely, resumed loading. Then he said “Hi” again, and I began to panic—had I misread everything?
Then he asked, “Are you going to the gym tomorrow morning?”—and suddenly it clicked. This was that man. The one I see at the gym every now and then—always rowing, always cheerful, radiating calm in a sea of matching workout sets. I immediately apologized for not recognizing him and told him I’d likely see him the next morning. It’s no wonder he recognized me outside the gym—I was radiating the same “woman on the brink” energy, just with a shopping cart instead of dumbbells.
Peyton, the high school cashier, laughed as I explained my mortification and my tendency to become a socially awkward monologue machine under pressure. I even managed to overshare (classic Zelda) about my excessive perspiration and why I’m never one of those effortlessly cute gym people. STOP TALKING, ZELDA. Peyton does not need this information! But to my surprise, he related. I think he even found me charming.
So thank you, man in the Eagles jersey, for your unrelenting positivity and unexpected cameos in both my gym life and grocery store existential crisis.
And no, I still don’t know your name.
It’s better that way.
