Clean Up On Aisle Five!

I dropped a large plastic container of blueberries in the self checkout line at the grocery store this afternoon. They. went. EVERYWHERE. They spilled into the self checkout lines on either side of mine. They went under the candy and magazine display racks. They reached the end-of-aisle display of taco shells, and they even rolled into the frozen foods section.

It was like dropping a 1,000 marbles on the floor. It wasn’t sloppy like spilling a gallon of milk would’ve been, but it was chaotic enough for me to stand paralyzed in the middle of the mayhem with my jaw dropped and watch the world around me move in slow motion.

That’s when I locked eyes with the guy waiting in the self checkout line next to me. He looked at me, and then he looked the blueberries circling his shoes like sharks, and then he looked at me again, and he started laughing.

I let out a giggle, too.

“I’m sorry I’m laughing,” he said.

“It’s okay,” I said. “It is pretty funny. I’m sorry about the smashed blueberries about to stick to the bottom of your shoes.”

An employee came over with a roll of paper towels, and we laughed some more because a snow plow would’ve been a much more efficient cleaning tool.

I apologized to everyone around me for the mess, and the guy who laughed at me said, “Hey, if this is the worst thing that happens to you today, you’re doing fine.”

Another employee came over with a broom and a dust pan (not the snow plow we needed, but better than the paper towels), I paid for my groceries, including a container of replacement blueberries Riley fetched while pretending not to be related to the embarrassing lady who spilled blueberries all over the damn place, and we went home.

To anyone who literally or figuratively dropped a pound of blueberries (or worse) on the floor at the grocery store today, remember this:

If this is the worst thing that happens to you today, you’re doing fine.

Perspective is everything.

**This is a picture of the replacement blueberries. I wanted to take a picture of the blueberries on the floor at the grocery store, but I worried about the optics.