Make it stop

How can you stand it, I asked a grocery store staffer. It annoys me, and I only have to be here for a little while.

He shuddered and told me they started three days before Thanksgiving. It's driving him batty.

How can you stand it, I asked the guy at the register as he bagged my groceries.

He tried to stay focused, he said. He just ignored it the best he could, concentrated on what was in front of him.

You'd think, after establishing strict child labor laws and a five-day workweek, unions would be able to ban all-day Christmas music in supermarkets.

I can sort of understand blasting "White Christmas" at customers in other stores. We're potentially buying presents. Maybe the management figures it can whip us into a spending frenzy by reminding us of when we were kids and anxiously awaited Santa's arrival. Or something.

But supermarkets? People buy food because they need food. It's not a seasonal thing. As far as I know, people don't shop for gifts in the frozen aisle.

I can strategically avoid most retail until December 26. I cannot, however, stop eating.

It's going to be a long month.

Grocery store serenader

I have a habit of singing along to the background music when I go grocery shopping. If I'm especially in the mood, I'll do this even if I don't like whatever it is they're piping through the sound system.

For some reason, the Albertson's I shopped at today didn't have any music on. Without thinking about it, I compensated by singing snatches of an old Status Quo song that happened to be going through my head at the moment.

"Piiiictures of matchstick men and you ... Images of matchstick men and you ..."

I was just loud enough to wake up my normally lethargic internal censor.

"Hey," said my internal censor. "This isn't one of your gigs. No one wants to hear you sing. You're annoying people. Quit it."

I quit it.

Maybe half a minute later, some guy walked past, singing. Not loud enough to have interrupted conversations around him if there had been any, but definitely audible. He was smiling. Totally unselfconscious.

And it occurred to me: He wasn't annoying. Not at all.

"Images of matchstick men and you ... All I ever see is them and you ..."