e Little River Review - Gorham High School!

Olivia Marshburn-Ersek
Strangers in Aisle Six
Strangers in Aisle Six
In Aisle Six of the grocery store, a woman whispers to a man, “Hey you! Do I know you from
somewhere? �ere’s something about you––just in your eyes, or your hair, or in the look on your face. You
remind me of someone. I mean, the way you study the back of that box of oatmeal like it’s something you
love, I don’t know, it just makes me think that I know you. Do I?”
“No, you don’t,” he says. “I’ve never seen you before in my life, except for maybe here in this
grocery store. But it’s okay; you seem like a nice person. Maybe I will know you. You are one of the �rst
people I’ve met who watches people as they pick up boxes of oatmeal in the store.”
“Well,” she says, “I wanted to know why you looked so fascinated by something so simple. I mean,
it’s not like oatmeal has some special ingredient in it other than oats. I wanted to know what it was that
captivated you, what made you stand there blocking the aisle when you could have already moved on to
getting the next thing on your list, and then on to the rest of your day. Mostly, I wondered what gave you
that smile on your face! I mean, do you have a love a�air with oatmeal, or something?”
“Oh, I hate oatmeal actually-that’s the thing. I’d never buy it on my own, but my little sister loves
oatmeal raisin cookies, so I thought I’d make them on our �rst-ever visit with just the two of us. I was
staring at the box because I was thinking about how I hated oatmeal when I was younger, a lot younger––
how my mom made me eat it for breakfast every morning because it “sticks with you.” It did, but it was
awful and way too sticky and it tasted like cardboard. I swear.
I hated the oatmeal––I mean I loved my mother and hated the disgusting, slimy stu� that she made me
every single day.”
“I know what you mean. Oatmeal is horrible by itself. It’s not like my mom ever made it though.
She fed me Cocoa Pu�s and Lucky Charms and Cap’n Crunch because that’s what I wanted and she
wanted to make me happy. I’m more interested to hear about your sister than oatmeal, though. I have
something in common with her, because we both love oatmeal raisin cookies.”
“Yeah, okay. She just graduated from college actually, two weeks ago, so she has a lot of time o�
now. I mean, she doesn’t have a job yet, and she doesn’t know whether she’s going to grad school yet
either. She got her degree in sociology and it’s not like there’s much you can do with that, anyway. So I
have a feeling that she’s going to stay longer than just one weekend, since she couldn’t bear to move back
in with my mom at age twenty-two.”
“Hah! It’s nice that you’re letting her stay with you. I know how it feels to be in her position, since
I majored in comparative literature, which was totally impractical,” she says. “And it doesn’t make much
sense �ve years later when you realize you’re going to have to go back to school to do something that
actually pays enough money to live.”
“Are you in school now?” he asks. “I can’t imagine being back in school myself.”
“No. �at was three years ago. I’m a teacher now; I’m about to �nish my �rst year teaching fourthgrade.
I love teaching now, I mean it’s like the passion I never discovered in all those years of college. If
only I’d realized that I wanted to teach back then! Oh well. Life’s a journey, and this is probably the only
way I could have discovered that I wanted to be a teacher.”
“What do you do?” she asks.
“Well, it’s a long story for me also. I basically have the opposite problem that you had, because I
was convinced at the age of ��een that I was going to become a chemical engineer. You know, I was good
at math and science and they seemed like pretty interesting subjects, but not ones that really inspired
me or anything. I just kept thinking about how I knew it would pay well. So I do have a good-paying job
for someone who’s only thirty––that’s funny; we’re the same age––but it’s so boring now, working in the
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