Living in this city has its own perculiar ups and downs, but there is one specific perk I will miss dearly if I ever am to leave: grocery shopping with firemen.
I don't know if other cities have the same phenomenon, but here, at around 7pm, scads of hot firemen pull their big, red firetrucks over to the side of the road and go, en masse, shopping for their dinner. Hot. Firemen. In uniforms.
Tonight I stopped at the Key Food (sucky, sucky grocery store, but directly between work and home) for some food, and there was a group (squad? team? pack?) of smokin' hot firemen getting all the fixings for some lasagna and salad. They were wearing all their gear, and there was one younger one who must be relatively new - he was made to steer the cart. People, I loved them. L-O-V-E. When the cart-pushing one smiled at me and moved over so I could pass, I felt my ego swell 9 times its normal size. I almost giggled.
I've been in the fish market with firemen, the butcher shop, the other [nicer] grocery store - and something about 8 or so grown men shopping for food together is so friggin' adorable that I can't stand it!
Firemen have always been sexy - yeah, it's a cliche by this point. But in the last two years, they've acheived superstar status here, and I am reduced to jelly around them - young, old, fat, thin - doesn't matter. I remember a day, not long after 9/11, when a group of firemen had to check all the offices at my former workplace for some reason. Three firemen suddenly peeked into my office, then did the same to all my other colleagues. Later - in a staff meeting no less - one co-worker (married, and a mother) said, "You know, I just really want to fuck them." That pretty much summed up the attitude most of the women I know have adopted towards firemen. If you put a uniformed fireman on one side of me, and George Clooney on the other (another delightful cliche of sexiness), I don't know which way I'd turn. But chances are I'd lose all ability to reason.
Tonight I ended up in front of the firemen at the checkout line. I was trying to think of clever and/or cute things I could say or do to impress them, but came up with nothing beyond tucking my hair behind my ears and glancing at the Lucky Magazine near the register. Then as I loaded my "groceries" onto the conveyor belt, I realized that my purchase totalled:
- 2 Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate bars
- 2 Cadbury Fruit & Nut chocolate bars
- 1 Entemann's Pecan Bunt Cake
- 2 Amy's Organic frozen pizzas
- 1 box tampons
Strangely enough, they didn't invite me to ride around on their firetruck with them.
I don't know why I assumed had I purchased some other items - you know, sexy groceries - they would have wanted to hang out with me, but hey - in my mind, it almost happened...
