As much as the cheese-dripping ooey-gooey delectables taunt me during late night commercials, I cannot bring myself to do it. I cannot step foot into that eatery until the hype has subsided, and of course the line is less than 10 people out the door.
This has nothing to do with the fact that I have semi-autistic reactions to large groupings of people, and go into sensory meltdown when the din rises above acceptable decibles... it is stemmed from childhood trauma... i.e. Safeway's grand opening circa 1987.
Of course we had grocery stores here before, but it was as if there never had been. The entire town appeared and somehow all fit within the aisles. Elbow jutting elbows, the people morphing almost literally into cattle with shopping carts stocking up on insane amounts of produce.
I am not sure why, or how my best bud at the time and I even ended up in the facility, but once you entered it was a futile attempt to escape. We wiggled and wriggled and body surfed our way back to the deli-meat counter, where they had lobsters with their claws rubber-banded in a murky aquarium. We briefly discussed the mayhem that would be created by freeing the caged crustaceans among the crowd, but neither was courageous enough to touch the creepy things, so we opted out of that mischief.
When it was time to leave, having collected a few cohorts along the way and looping belts as safety tethers from losing each other into the black abyss of a line, we waited...
and waited ....
and waited ....
The livestock began mooing, their cages rattled and hooves squealed on the fresh waxed tile, and we were trapped within an inescapable B-movie horror. (Make that a D or E or suitible only for YouTube movie.)
Obviously somehow we did eventually make the exit, and survived physically unscathed, but the absurdity of the herd mentality of any Kodiakan grand opening was forever scarred into memory. So patience imbued, I will savor the flavors of the long-awaited Taco Bell another day.
****
On a side note, now that the previously withheld temptation has been quenched... what other inattainable treat will people beg to be flown in by people returning from Anchorage? Pizza Hut?
3 comments:
I remember pre-MacDonalds, there was a boy on the varsity basketball team who came home with a lot - a dozen or more Big Macs and sold them for $5 a piece. The big treat of course was when someone brought a bucket of the Colonel's chicken home from ANC. The planes always had some sort of fast food scent back then. I do remember the day Dairy Queen opened and several classes from the high school decided to take a "field trip" to try it out. Hopefully, the Taco Bell/KFC stampede doesn't last too long and you can get your fix. If you ever make it to the United States, you need to try an In-n-Out Burger..they ruin you for all other fast food burgers...
Actually, you really missed out on your opportunity to do it like the salmon, and swim upstream. I went, I survived, and it was so worth it. It felt so forbidden and tempting in its cheesy goodness...It was like slow dancing with a hot stranger...oh and they gave away free stuff.
It was still SRO when I drove by tonight at 9 p.m.....
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