…Which Is How I Think I Pulled a Muscle In My Abdomen

Guest post by Jason Myers-Benner, enjoyed thoroughly by his wife!!!

I guess I’m getting old, because I was at the urologist, and she recommended a supplement called Quercetin for my lingering prostate symptoms, so even though I was due to pick up the kids at my sister’s place on the way home, it was such a short appointment that I figured I had time, so I stopped by the grocery store, which is also, of course, a pharmacy, to buy it.

I am the kind of guy who forgets how to enter the grocery store; I still go left past where the “natural” foods section used to be, instead of right past the produce. Now they have a rack of charcoal briquettes where the natural potato chips used to be, so apparently now it’s also a charcoal briquette store. And a shoe store, because I walked past a rack of shoes. Well, foam rubber sandals.

Actually, I didn’t walk past. I stopped and looked at them, and tried on some pairs. I found the ones I would want if I got any, then made my way to the vitamin and supplement section.

I am the kind of guy who takes a long time finding what I’m looking for on a grocery store rack. Like Paul Simon’s “myth of fingerprints”, all the bottles and their labels look the same to me. So, as I often do, I gave up and asked for help at the pharmacy counter.

They had never heard of it. The young pharmacist with dyed red hair sculpted into a sideways wave and the cashier both whipped out their phones and started in with some poking and swiping. I asked them if they were checking SnakeOil.com, but he said it wasn’t like that, it was just that for some reason no stores seemed to carry it; it was only available from online suppliers. Ok, thanks, I said.

I am the kind of guy who doesn’t like to walk out of a store empty-handed. I just don’t like the feeling that, to somebody, I might look like a shoplifter. I bought the shoes.

I sort of needed them anyway. My previous foam rubber sandals, which I had bought around fifteen years ago, and which I keep by the front door for quick errands outside or for outings on the casual–to–slovenly continuum, have been admitting water straight through the soles for several years, and offer but pitiful protection from sharp gravel. Now they can finally sink into their well-earned rest, going the way of all foam rubber sandals, which is to abide eternally, compressed and distorted, in the bowels of the county landfill. Almost eternally, that is. At some point our local tectonic plate will slide under someone else’s, and my foam rubber sandals will join the magma.

Anyway, that evening we had dinner with neighbors, so on the way out the door I slipped my feet into the new sandals, eager to give them a try. They are great! My walk down the road was a pleasure. We enjoyed a nice visit with our friends, then just before dusk, we headed back home. This is a sweet time in our family, with our kids old enough now to require a bit less anxious and immediate kinds of attention, and we just celebrated our 25th anniversary. We were married so young!

Filled with the soft evening light, and the light banter of the family conversation, filled with tacos and rhubarb crisp and a little wine, enjoying the pleasure of these new sandals cradling my feet in fresh foam rubber comfort, I said, “These shoes are pretty comfy.”

For the first time, she noticed them. She is the kind of person who prefers getting rid of things to buying new ones. I wondered what she would think of my semi-impulse buy. We’ve been working on giving each other more space, exercising less judgment, following our pleasure, holding each other unconditionally. It’s been feeling really good.

“Where did you get those?” When I said that I had bought them at the grocery store after failing to find the supplement I went there for after my urology appointment, she said, with amusement and exasperation, but no criticism in her voice: “You are so random.”

And it all came out. The pleasure, the light, the good full feeling, the blossoming sense of self-possession within this tricky dance of relationship, the wonder at being two quirky, unpredictable beings who have loved each other these 25 years, better all the while, the awareness of the kind of guy I am, represented in the amused consternation of my beloved; it all came out in one tear-producing, arms-holding-belly, incapacitating, one-footed, knee-lifting, torso-scrunching laugh…