Nightmare at Trader Joe's

Halloween is just over two weeks away, so it's time to start dusting off the scary stories.  Gather round, dear readers, and listen to my tale:

Nightmare at Trader Joe's

(a tale of terror for the socially awkward)

It was a dark and rainy night (no, seriously, it's really raining outside), when I ventured out into the streets of Brookline in a quest for bread and sliced turkey at the Coolidge Corner Trader Joe's.  As I was walking down the aisle, I ran into the professor from my department whom I'm never sure I should call by his first name or not because he's not that much older than I am and he was never my professor.  Of course, it being a rainy night, I was wearing my giant raincoat that makes me look like a petite serial killer and my hair was horrendous and also I may have a mild case of conjunctivitis.  No matter, however, as I was more concerned whether I had anything embarrassing in my basket.  I then thought, what is the most embarrassing thing one can get at Trader Joe's?  It's not like they sell tampons...would Trader Joe's-brand tampons have a special name?  Like "Trader Flo's?"  Ha, I'm pretty clever, I should market that.  Before getting too lost in my brilliant tampon-naming thoughts, I managed to realize that I had nothing in my basket to be ashamed of (apart from a bounty of microwavable dinners-for-one), and proceeded to make the appropriate amount of small-talk before I continued down the aisle.

But I didn't need anything in that aisle.  

But I couldn't turn around!  Because then I'd look like I didn't know what I was doing in my own neighborhood Trader Joe's!  So I pretended to be looking for something in that aisle, which unfortunately was the weird soap/fake deodorant/essential oils aisle.  I landed on a shelf of bottled water, the most benign thing I could find in the aisle, and stared at it until he had walked away.  I spent the rest of my shopping trip looking around corners, because the only thing worse than running into someone you know at the grocery store is running into that person again at the grocery store.  I decided that I was in need of no more groceries and booked it to the checkout queue and hoped to the Virgin Mary that he wouldn't end up right behind me, or worse, that I had forgotten my wallet and we would have stumbled into humiliating "You've Got Mail" territory.  Thankfully, none of those things happened, but it was a close call (with the him being behind me, not the forgetting my wallet).  I paid for my groceries, did not wait for a receipt, and exited the store without further incident.

You know, you see these kinds of things in movies and you read about them happening to other people, but you never think it's going to happen to you.