Looking for September

I've been living in Maine a long time now and know well the annual return of the tourists flocking in like locust to feast on our lobster, rage on our roads, and tear up our lakes. I used to be one of the locust. I know the routine -- here they come, here they spend their money, there they go. I get it.

It typically doesn't bother me. I can move patiently and peacefully through the traffic with all the lane-changing shenanigans, beeping, and gesturing of the out-of-staters because it is not unlike navigating a middle school hallway. And the crowds in town do not usually bother me either because I spend the school year going around in the classroom between bodies that don't move when they see you struggling to get past them with a stack of a dozen textbooks that weight 15-pounds each.

But what on earth is going on this summer? It seems that there are just so many of them! And they are either zipping past you angrily or standing there dumbfounded. Maybe it's the lower gas prices. Or maybe nobody knows what's going to happen after the election in November, given the candidates, so it's all a last-ditch attempt to experience the way life should be. If you can't find it in Maine, what hope is left?

The cause of my rant was what should have been a simple trip to 
Hannaford Supermarket in Windham this morning. The two mile drive from my house took a little longer as we all had to slog along behind a camper pulling a sedan, pulling a boat, pulling a trailer with five bicycles and a grandmother in a rocking chair. O.K. That is all to be expected. Family vacations require a lot of stuff.

When I finally did arrived, it was a slower crawl to even get into the parking lot. This was due to a funeral procession that was swinging past the front of the supermarket. 

Or, so I thought. On second glance, it was a line of SUV's,  all of them black, all of them with out-of-state license plates, running their AC with the passengers inside. They were lining up for their curbside pickup of groceries. 

Well, this I understand too. If I had just driven hours through traffic with kids, dogs, and grandmother, I too would pull up and have someone fill my cars with groceries before I headed to the cabin on the lake. One less thing to worry about during a well-deserved vacation.

What I didn't expect was the mayhem inside the store. People, so many people! There was a swarm at the deli counter, waving their numbers like they were on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, babies crying, peaches rolling on the floor through the produce area. Peaches!

Carriage traffic was jammed up behind what looked like little Zamboni machines everywhere blocking aisles. But this was not an ice arena and the Zamboni's were actually large silver carts filled with grocery bags, driven very, very, VERY slowly by very stressed employees trying to fill the orders for the vacationing people lined up outside in their SUV's. It takes a long time because they are following a  precise list sent through earlier online by the precise shoppers.

You know it's bad when the disabled people in the electric shopping carts start ramming their way through. After getting pegged in the back of the knees and my toes nearly run over by one eldery man making a run on sweet potatoes, I learned to listen for the ssszzzttt sound of the electric motor winding up prior to the bursts forward. 

I don't know if there were more people using electric carts today or it seemed like there were more of them because I was on high alert for another affront to the back of my knees, but the electric carts seemed to be everywhere.  

I have to give Hannaford credit. There were employees in all the right places helping people, all hands on deck, every register open. One voice called out to me, a bright-eyed young man stacking jars of pickles as fast as people were snatching them off the shelf. (I must have had a look of anguish on my face.)

"How are you today, ma'am? May I help you find something?"

And I found myself thinking a thought no teacher in her right mind, on summer break ever should: September. Just September.