I went to the grocery store today because I had no food in my apartment and I had seen the weather forecast: if it is to be believed, then six inches of snow will descend on Kansas City tomorrow.
A tentative forecast of Saturday snow had actually been kicking around for most of this past week, but I had been convinced it was a mistake. Snow in late March, I figured, was obviously impossible.
But as the week wore on, the temperature kept dropping and the forecast kept changing. Originally, it had said there would be freezing rain and sludgy quasi-snow. Then it was an inch of snow. Then two inches. Then three.
Then, today, I realized that it was thirty degrees outside, that tomorrow’s prediction was now for six full inches of impossible late-March snowfall, and that I’d have to stop living in denial.
The grocery store was more packed than I’ve ever seen it. The parking lot was nearly full; there was just one vacant shopping cart at the front of the store. The aisles were packed with people clad in winter coats.
They spoke to each other about the coming six inches of snow the way people in movies might speak about a coming alien invasion. There was talk of getting “snowed under,” of getting “trapped,” of “stocking up,” of making sure to get “enough” to last “at least one night.”
I kept my head down and tried to slip through the crowd. It didn’t take me long to do my shopping. It never does, because I live almost entirely on Honey Bunches of Oats and protein bars. It’s not healthy, but what is? We’ll all die someday no matter what we eat.
The wait in line was kind of painful. While a woman unloaded approximately three thousand separate items onto the conveyor belt in front of me, I passed the time by flipping through an issue of Glamour I’d pulled down from the magazine rack. I hope no one noticed me doing this because it probably looked gay as hell.
When I left, the atmosphere outside was half-air, half-water, and the water half was half-drizzle, half-sleet. I guess it really is going to snow tomorrow.
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