The Single files: Trip to grocery store 'produces' anxiety By Molly DeCleene News-Chronicle I'm in the grocery store when it happens. Until this moment, I have been pushing my cart up and down the aisles, oblivious to everything but my list and the ever-growing number of things in my metal basket. I fetch salad oil and strawberries and orange juice and milk, foods I consider essential. And then, in Aisle Five, it hits me square between the eyes like an industrial-size can of diced tomatoes. I'm single. I'm 28, and as unattached as a person could possibly get. One-bedroom apartment. One car. One life: Mine. I start to hyperventilate. Surely my single status must be obvious to everyone else in the supermarket: the nice boy who told me where the yellow rice was, the produce man, the stock boy. I have the horrible feeling that I have the words "Single Loser Freak" tattooed on my forehead in invisible ink. Invisible to me, that is, and a damned beacon to everyone else. I think that if a jar of applesauce were to fall off of a shelf and onto me, shattering into a thousand pieces and lacerating my skin, my blood would ooze out in an unnatural color to further distinguish my single status. Blue, maybe. Or brown. Or green. That's certainly freakish enough. I carefully scan the selection of napkins, amid couples with Lunchables for their kids; "family-size" cans of baked beans; coupons for pasta sauce and fabric softener and dish soap. I think they can tell - though I've hidden my hands in my shirtsleeves - that there is no ring on my left hand. That they see this heap of fruits and vegetables and weird Italian cheeses in my cart and enter one of two schools of thought. One: "Oh, my gosh! All of that food for yourself? What a pig!" Two: "You poor thing. You're buying all of that food for yourself? Why, you'll be eating that bread for three months!" Unbeknownst to the people in the second school of thought, I agree. I'm afraid to buy family-size containers of anything for fear the contents will spoil before I consume them. Unless the expiration date is Doomsday. Why? Because that's how long it will take for me to meet someone who will put up with all of my idiosyncrasies (my love of weird Italian cheeses notwithstanding); someone whose idiosyncrasies I can endure with few complaints. With a sigh, I push my cart to the checkout. The checkout girl knows. She has to. In her eyes are sympathy and the question that should be outlawed as a courtesy to single folks everywhere. The question for which I have neither a pat, nor a cute, answer. The question well-meaning but sometimes-clueless people ask: "Why doesn't a bright, pretty, nice girl like you have a boyfriend?" I DON'T KNOW! Ask the male population. Ask my ex boyfriends. Ask my dad. Then, tell me why it matters so much to the questioning couples and so much to me. Maybe I'll luck out. Maybe grocers will take pity on us single folk and give away potential mates with the purchase of $10 in produce. Then I wouldn't have to worry about wayward jars of applesauce. And I could buy at least one family-size product without feeling gluttonous. Toilet paper. A person always needs that, right? Molly DeCleene is a former RAVE editor. She is a children's librarian for Brown County and lives in Green Bay with her nonexistent cat. Contact her at [email protected]