The Giant Eagle Bandit

I feel ridiculous, I thought to myself, like I’m trying to rob a train in the Ole West. I hiked up the bandanna higher across the bridge of my nose and tried to avoid making eye contact with any of the other patrons of the Giant Eagle grocery store. I was on the hunt for supplies.

Luckily, I worked from home and could venture out to the stores during the weekday when most people were stuck in their offices.

Articles like NPR’s “A Guide: How to Prepare Your Home for Coronavirus” suggested that now would be a good time to get prepared for when the coronavirus hit my area. This was so my family could avoid catching the disease from potentially infected after-church Sunday grocery shoppers. I was looking for stuff like over-the-counter medicine we took regularly, stuff we typically stocked for when we got sick like ginger ale and crackers, and cleaning supplies like bleach, hand sanitizer, and soap.

Thanks to articles like Bon Appetit’s “Say You’re Stuck at Home for Two Weeks,” I also had a list of pantry items I needed to find. Stuff like pasta, rice, beans, seeds, dried fruit, peanut butter, a big bottle of olive oil, canned tomatoes, tinned fish. Fruits and vegetables that store well in a cool dry place like potatoes, onions, and apples. Stuff that I’d never even considered buying before went on the list like powdered milk and eggs. The article suggested that baking might be a good way to pass the fortnight that one might be expected to stay at home with the family, so I was also looking for yeast, sugar, and some chocolate chips.

I stalked around the store, yanking my improvised mask up wondering if my husband was right. He thought the bandanna wasn’t necessary and judging from the lack of facial coverings on the other patrons, neither did they. But the Ohio governor thought something was in the air cause on March fifth he and the Ohio Department of Health Director, Amy Acton, issued an order prohibiting spectators at the Arnold Sports Festival in Columbus—a gathering of fitness enthusiasts patronized by Arnold Schwarzenegger that featured something called the Pump and Run. And no, this was not a contest involving swole folks having one night stands, it was a weight lifting contest followed by a sprint around downtown.

The change to the Arnold was the first move by the state to limit large gatherings.

There was something off about my shopping trip, other than my improvised facial covering. There were gaps on the shelves that had never been there before. The canned green beans that always lived right at the end of their aisle on the second shelf from the bottom were missing. There were no frozen spinach boxes in the freezer case. There was an empty space in the pharmacy section where the thermometers were usually located. And the entire paper product area was bereft of toilet paper and paper towels.

It was clear. I was going to have to go to multiple stores to complete my list. And at every one I worried about exposing myself to increasing numbers of germs.

The crescendo of my worrying happened at the international supermarket. In Columbus, Ohio we are privileged to have an enormous grocery store (Saraga) that settled into an abandoned Toys R’ Us building that brings together items from around the globe. It’s got aisles devoted solely to staples and snacks from a specific  geographic region or country—Europe, Africa, South America, Indonesia, Japan, China… I was there for a few huge jars of kimchi, figuring it would be a prudent idea to stock a vegetable with a long shelf life. But, looking around the store, I wondered with items coming in from around the world and with patrons who had ties all around the world shopping at the store, was the kimchi worth the risk?

Stop being a racist, I scolded myself. I threw a few boxes of shelf-stable tofu into the cart.

At Target they had placed signs on the shelves limiting quantities of disinfectant wipes and hand sanitizer to six per guest. But it didn’t matter, because by the time I got there they were completely sold out of those items.