All morning long I've been listening to the morning radio people making fun of the peculiar New England habit of rushing to the stores the day before an impending snow storm and stocking up with what might seem unreasonable amounts of refrigerator staples, as though they feared being snowed in for a month and not a weekend.
The Milk and Bread phenomenon is well-known to me in part because I lived in Rhode Island between the years of 1991 and 1995, the wee state where the words "No school Foster-Glocester" could inspire hope (in case we, too, might have a snow day) and frustration (WHY, oh why, does Foster-Glocester get a snow day when I have to stand here in the freezing cold before sun-up?).
I was going to resist the trend, but I needed to refill a prescription and soon found myself at Walgreens with three cartons of eggs (they were on sale!) and a gallon of milk. Mind you, by typical New England standards my purchases, even for a single woman, were highly restrained ... but then, I wanted to be sure to leave some for the soccer mom who informed the morning DJ that she intended to buy ten (!) gallons for her family of six. This is a weekend we're talking about here. One, maybe two days of "stay at home, the roads suck." Sigh. At least it brings back memories of Little Rhody.
While at Walgreens, I saw my pastor's wife with her two adorable wee ones and promptly went up to her (looking somewhat frazzled, as the mother of a toddler and an infant is bound to do when forced to carry both shopping with her) and greeted her by her first name. The German in me would have said something like "Mrs. Doctor Pastor ____," but the American in me has grown quite accustomed to the rampant use of first names with people we hardly know. A few aisles later, having just grabbed my gallon of milk, it hit me: she's British. Meaning, she was far more likely to ascribe to the German sensibilities - or at least to want her surname used by some brat college student who just happens to attend her husband's church ... so I went up to her again to apologise, but by this point I'm afraid I just annoyed her more. D'oh.
Score for Red's social graces: 0 for 2.
10:07
