Toilet Paper Fantasy

I stood aimlessly at the check-out stand embracing a six-pack of two-ply toilet paper. The clock reads 8:15, as I itemize the groceries; I toss them on to the conveyer belt. A woman about 70 or 75 cuts into line, two steps before me with a package of ravioli and a loaf of French bread. Dinner by 9:30 and bed by 10:00, I figured as I observed her. No children, no hips, no husband, no ring, a dog, no a cat, I presumed, sits curled on barely worn paisley sofa waiting her lonely owner's return.

Standing behind me was a twenty something girl. I remembered a young me. Then I realize that my own daughters were older than she is. I clung the toilet paper rolls to my chest.

It’s in the cold, brightly lit grocery stores where life gets very real. I glanced at the Cosmo propped precociously in its wire shelving. I always feel a little resentful at magazines like these make money by attempting to make women feel like they’re not good enough offering topics galore on how to diet, have better sex, or just seize the day. Reality cracked through my preoccupied brain as a child squealed, an employee was paged, register scanners beeped, and an old man rattles two stuck shopping carts apart..

I step forward with my tissue. I like to call it tissue, it is a softer sound. "Paper" is not a thing you want touching those tender secret flower-like places. I can’t help it. I was brought up in an age when advertisers provide a world of toilet paper fantasy. If aliens are watching our television signals from outer space they'd never guess what we really use TP for, I think as I step up to the counter.

"Anything else mam," he asks. I look up into the unexpected depths of icy blue eyes.

"Mam?" he asks, “is this it?”

"Yes," I say stealing several seconds to add him up eyes and all. He's too old to be a checker, which means what?

“Unaccomplished”, mother would say,

"Unfortunate" my best friend sighs from her ever present presence in my cerebrum.

“Who cares” I think. They are just pretty eyes; eyes for old ladies with aching backs, eyes for young ladies with small babies; eyes from behind the scanner and eyes for me when I pass through.

And as the wide doors of reality slide open before me I step out to into the Ralphs parking lot carrying one slightly brimming bag of Toilet Paper Fantasy.