Shoppers Grocery Store

Along with a move comes a lot of newness- I need a new barber, a new gas station, a new video rental store, new running paths, new driving routes to my favorite destinations like The Container Store, a new grocery store, and a new library. Many of those places I will probably have to abandon with the move, much like all my doorknobs which I graciously left behind. But that penultimate location is the one I'd like to focus on today.
Within a mile of my house is a Giant grocery store (In the Northeast Giant is known as Stop & Shop; they carry the same logo but different names). I don't mean it is a particularly large grocery store, but the actual name and business plan is Giant. They have a bouncer there and I once saw him reject a vertically challenged man because he wasn't 'giant' enough. Their slogan is "If you're not six feet tall, get your food at the mall." Their slogan in Southeast DC is "Shorties need not apply." I sort of felt like the this whole idea was a little bit discriminatory, and even though I felt honored to be included in their elite clientele I wasn't sure I wanted to support an organization with such biased opinions. I considered my alternate options for food consumption:

• Eat two meals a day at my school cafeteria, and just eat party food over the weekend from the various events I attend.
• Eat my roommates' food. I have five of them so if I distribute my eating habits in the right way I'm pretty sure I could pull it off long enough for a new grocery story to be built in my area without them noticing.
• Catch my own food. I have seen many birds out my window, though none of them chickens. I have berry trees in my front yard, but not strawberries, blueberries, or raspberries.
• Go to a different grocery store.

After trying options 1-3 this past week I ended up with a bruised jaw when my roommate punched me, having to get my stomach pumped after eating what was definitely not just a new variety of red blueberry, and getting questioned quite severely about whether I was a friend of the bride or the groom at the Olyveskiannaruki-Martinez wedding I crashed on Saturday.

So I did what all good Boy Scouts would do- I drove an additional mile down the road to Shoppers. Shoppers is a discount grocery store with a reputation for attracting people who like to shop. I don't entirely fit that description but they let me in anyway- the first good sign. When I walked through those sliding glass doors I immediately felt a sharp pain in my nose. A fellow shopper asked if I was alright, helped me wipe the blood away, then showed me where the sliding door was actually located, one panel away from where I had distractedly walked.

Once I finally made it in the store I was still in pain but the joy of finding a solution to my starvation far outweighed the thoughts of nose reconstruction surgery swirling in my head like a jetty. Shoppers is a great grocery store. And frankly I consider it even more giant than Giant, if that's possible. I am now more tempted to stop and shop at Shoppers than I am at Stop and Shop. I now consider the safest way to my stomach to be via Shoppers than through Safeway. After oohing and aaahing at their low prices, clean floors, and incredible selections, I checked out the beauty products. I will not go into detail regarding my reasoning- just know that men like to look beautiful too. But let me show you what I found:

Yep, apparently Hispanics and people with ethnicities need different products to look beautiful. I could never pass off as Hispanic so I bypassed that section, but I do feel that I have an ethnicity so I checked that row out. I debated a new weave, but ultimately decided when it's time to switch mine out I'm going to have it done at a barbershop and not a grocery store.
I'm not an employee of Shoppers and they aren't paying me anything to advertise for them, but I will definitely be going back. Sure I got a broken nose, but at least I didn't have to get my stomach pumped or get arrested for crashing a Bar Mitzvah in Bethesda. It looks like I'm going to be okay with the new move after all.