Blogs

Recently, a sort of cultural arms' race has broken out between the two grocery stores that are equidistant from our house.

To the west, a formerly sleepy supermarket underwent a total makeover that included an expanded liquor department. As every schoolboy knows, in order to celebrate an upgrade from Bud Light in suitcase packages to snooty microbrews and wine prices that start at $12 a bottle, it is essential that one hire a harpist.

I'm not talking about a blues harpist, like Little Walter Jacobs. I mean a classical harpist like - well, actually, I can't name one.

With the delicate pluckings of a classical harpist in the background, it is possible to charge a $3 per bottle premium over prices your customers could find a mile or so down the road, at the liquor store where they display the stuff in the original cardboard boxes. It's so much more civilized with Pachelbel's Canon playing while you shop.

At the other end of town, the natural food store decided to add a mime to - well, to add whatever touch of high culture it is that having a mime around supplies. An element of whimsy? A note of Francophilia? A sense of life's absurdity? I can honestly say that, after extensive consideration of the question, I just don't know.

The natural food store is noteworthy for its counter-intuitive hyper-restrictive policy on accepting recyclable bottles and cans. You would think that a natural food store would be at the forefront - nay the barricades - of the battle to save the earth by paying customers a nickel to turn in their soft drink containers.

You would be wrong. From the automated machines outside that say "Non-participating container" when you try to feed them a raspberry-seltzer bottle you bought inside the store, to the manual redemption option inside, which requires interaction with a human being who would rather be writing the Great American Novel or at least a chapbook of sestinas, the place appears to take the position that recycling is a plot masterminded by a vast, right-wing conspiracy, which they are resisting on moral grounds. Like Lillian Hellman refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Which brings me to the mime. He was standing there, going through his routines - trapped in a box, fighting a gale-force hurricane, etc. - as I rounded the corner looking for the granola. There was no one else around to help me. I don't shop there that often, but my wife insisted that I get Sunday night dinner there, instead of at the pathetically unenlightened, nitrate/nitrite-laden place where I like to shop, because of the lack of harpists and mimes in their aisles.

So I asked the guy, "Can you tell me where the granola is?" He gave me that startled fawn look that mimes adopt when they hear an imaginary sound.

"Cereal?" I asked, going for the generic term if I couldn't get through to him with the specific.

If it had been me beneath that whiteface, I would have just said "Aisle 3.″ But would that have been as aesthetically pleasing as pretending to eat imaginary cereal from an imaginary bowl? You're right - not as good.

Anyway, I suffered through the whole routine, including imaginary milk and imaginary spoon. Bottom line, after he was done, he pointed to his left and held up three fingers. Thanks, you dingbat.

And so, if you want to end your weekend on a low note, I have a suggestion. Go shopping at some place that's trying to position itself as the shopping option of choice for upscale folks who prefer their chicken free-range, and their coffee free-trade.

And ask a mime.

- Con Chapman

Con Chapman is a Boston-area writer whose works include The Year of the Gerbil, a history of the 1978 Yankees-Red Sox pennant race, 10 published plays and two novels, Making Partner and CannaCorn (Joshua Tree Publishing). His articles and humor have appeared in magazines and newspapers including The Atlantic Monthly, The Boston Globe and The Christian Science Monitor.