The Celery Stalks at Midnight

I promised recently that I would tell the my favorite elderly people at the supermarket story, and I shall. I also promised I'd do it on Friday, but you should all be used to me letting you down by this point. So, without further ado I give you a cautionary tale about missing your turn.

It all began simply, with a decision to run errands after work. The first errand was to return some DVDs we had rented to our local Hollywood Video. The second was to stop at Meijer, the dominant grocer in Michigan. After returning the DVDs, we decided that rather than try to turn left without a light onto one of the main roads at 5:00, we would take the back way to Meijer by passing through a neighborhood. We drove along, talking, until I realized that I had accidentally passed the road I wanted to take. We could either drive to the next connecting street, taking us several miles out of the way, or simply turn around. What a fateful choice this was.

Realizing my mistake, I turned into the next available driveway and prepared to back out and go back the way I had come. As I watched the traffic, looking for an opening, I noticed that in car was an elderly woman staring at us, as if awestruck. As she passed, she continued staring. She continued staring as she turned onto a side street and turned her car around. It seems that we had chosen her driveway as the convenient turn-around spot.

I found the break in traffic I had been waiting for, backed out into the street, and we were off again. We drove to the store and parked the car. It took us a couple of moments to locate the grocery list we had made, and by the time we exited the car another vehicle was pulling into a spot only two parking places away. (I'll respect your intelligence enough not to state the obvious and tell you who it was.) We were surprised but decided to dismiss the whole thing as a coincidence and continue with our shopping.

We wandered through the store, first browsing the produce section to see what was worth picking up. As I conducted my usual search for the perfect apple, we noticed that she was lingering not too far away. No big deal, right? The produce section is right by the front of the store and it's fairly large: still just coincidence.

We continued our shopping, and no matter where we went, she appeared not long after. She was on every aisle, yet never placed anything into her basket. We quickly finished up our shopping and left. (By finished up our shopping, I mean we decide that the whole thing was too creepy and that we'd go to the store tomorrow.) I don't know what she did once we left, but I feel quite sure that to this day if anyone were to rob or vandalize her home, she would give the police our license plate number and our descriptions and tell them about how we were "casing the joint" a while back.

Until later...