i just took nyquil and i am trying to write this fast before it kicks in
You never liked grocery stores.
They're creepy. There's something unsettling about all those tiles and people with carriages and grannies who give you the stink eye and hug their purses a little tighter when they walk by you, all at once, all in an enclosed area and bared nice and crudely under sickeningly bright florescent lighting. The place stinks like day-old sick and Lysol and there's all these beeps and bwips and chatter that you're not used to. Celine Dion's on the radio, warbling tinnily somewhere about your head.
Is this a nightmare?
You're pretty sure this is a nightmare.
Twenty years old and people tend to give you looks when you cart around this tiny, wriggling, pooping mess of a thing. It's generally the accusatory look of 'You Stole That Baby, Didn't You', and it makes you hunch your shoulders all the more and hope to hell you can get out of this godforsaken place faster. Dave is walking and already too cool for sitting in carriages (at least for the first twenty minutes, before his legs get tired). Dave is also at a stage in his life where he needs to touch. Everything.
So here you are with a cart full of Fritos and chicken nuggets and taco shells and also some bananas because you're pretty sure bananas are good and healthy, standing over a smashed display of pickle jars because tiny grubby toddler fingers tried to pull out the bottom jar. Your shoes reek of vinegar, and Dave is wailing behind tiny ironic shades as he grips those same goddamn fingers into your jeans, bottom lip sucked pathetically into his teeth.
God, you really need to get up the nads to lecture more, this ain't right. He already knows he fucked up and you have this overwhelming urge to dropkick him right off your shin but you end up cursing out the poor worker they send to mop it up instead, all pimply in his bright yellow polo shirt. You throw out a bunch of colorful words about unsafe environments for children and shit and it almost sounds convincing.
"Asshole," you punctuate.
"Affhal!" Dave reiterates helpfully from somewhere behind your calf.
For some reason, you don't go back to that grocery store anymore. Or most grocery stores. The lights, man, they just make you feel like you're being judged; it makes you all uncharacteristically twitchy and nervous and Dave touched all these things and it was your worst nightmare, all bottled up into one tiled horror show of a store. Fast food's just as healthy, right? Corner stores, where you can get chocolate milk and fuckin' ice cream out of the freezers. It worked. It worked!
It functioned, just like you and just like this household.