Shopping in our immediate area has expanded exponentially, there is absolutely no category of goods or foodstuffs that is not available to us within an extremely close circuit surrounding this residential area. My husband had cautioned me yesterday morning based on his having ventured out earlier to pick up more grout to finish the tile wall he has just laid on our family room fireplace wall that the roads are packed with cars.

Still nothing prepared me for the shock of the reality when I entered the supermarket I've shopped at for the past fifteen years and more to see that the area of the large vestibule usually tight-packed with shopping carts was almost devoid of them. When I entered the store itself it was to discover that the usually-quiet shopping I indulged in there was not going to happen this time around. The densely-packed shopping crowd presented a picture of noisy pandemonium.

The store, like all other retail establishments, had been closed on Good Friday. People were obviously making up for that one day when they weren't able to shop.Which still didn't logically explain the numbers crowding the spacious aisles of this store.

There was a sign up where bananas are usually kept, to advise shoppers there were none. They had run out of their regular delivery because they had advertised them on special for Thursday at half-price, hoping no doubt to entice shoppers to attend to their food shopping a day earlier rather than a day later than they usually do. It hadn't enticed me. But it had obviously brought to the attention of those many people who have a habit of drifting from store to store to pick up advertised specials, to respond, and they obviously had.

I was thankful that this was the only product unavailable, but still felt resentful since bananas represent an important staple in our diet; we each consume one daily and it's my habit to pick up two to three large bunches once a week to see us through. There evidently were a few small bunches available prior to my arrival, for I saw in several peoples' carts mean little bunches of no more than three or four stunted bananas. At one point I saw a plastic shopping bin that appeared to have been abandoned, with a few items including four little bananas. I had to convince myself not to avail myself of them, for perhaps the bin hadn't been abandoned, simply left there while the shopper went elsewhere for a moment?

As it happened, my husband after delivering me back home to get busy unpacking the volume of food that I'd bought, ventured out briefly to another store, this one a newly opened oriental specialty store nearby where he was able to buy bananas and pick up a few other items not normally available where I shop; like snow peas from Latin America, rather than from China, which we refuse to buy.