SEPT_OCTOBER_2015_FINAL_no bleed

ROSE’S MARKET

I found an old toy cash register in our attic, and I opened for business. Oh, man — we had so much fun. Maybe that sounds weird. But consider a staple of every children’s museum in the world now: A kid-sized, interactive, hands- on grocery store. (“We sponsor the exhibit at the Bayou Children’s Museum in Thibodaux, where kids can shop for seafood and fresh produce.” —Donny Rouse ) So, maybe I was ahead of my time. A young and insouciant Freud, leading my peers in acting out our adult fantasies? Or, maybe I was just a hoarder. That’s certainly how my mother saw it.The day she found out. • • •   Oh dear.The day she found out. It wasn’t a good day. Not for me. Not for her. And certainly not for my fledgling grocery empire. One Saturday afternoon after my friends had gone home, my mom came into my room before I had secreted away all of my belongings. My dry goods consortium. My beautiful collection. The objects that made me happy. She flipped out. I mean … she lost it. As a parent now, I get it. I do. Food in bedrooms, in closets, in drawers, under beds. NOT a good idea. I get that now. She went downstairs, retrieved a box of trash bags (I didn’t tell her that I already had one or maybe two), and ordered me to bag up all this trash and get it out of the house. Now.

from corporate management: This store was closing. Today. No clearance sale. Just: Everything must go. It was not one of the great moments of my youth. I sullenly bagged up all the cans and boxes and containers into trash bags and hauled them out to the garbage. And no doubt about it, tossing the egg cartons was the hardest part. I might have cried. I’m pretty sure I cried. • • •   Thing is — and this was a mistake — I kept the sugar packets. It was not meant as an act of defiance or disrespect. It’s just that — well, I already told you: Those were real . Those were my life! Naturally, she found them. She remained calm. She held them up for me to see and asked me if I wanted every insect in our town to come into my room and start feasting on all this sugar. She asked me if I wanted to live with ants. She did it in that way that parents —myself included — lay the largest possible guilt trip on their kids to try and make a point. Are you trying to poke your eye out? Do you want to kill the new puppy? Would you be happy if you BURNED THE HOUSE DOWN? Y’know. Stuff like that. And it was over like that. In a flash. The groceries, the egg cartons, and now the sugar packets: Gone. All those years of saving. For what?

• • •   So I started collecting stamps. I went to high school. Went to college. Got a job, got married, had kids. And here I am today. Working for a grocery store. And you know what the craziest thing is? The egg carton was invented by a newspaper editor in 1911. A journalist! Egg cartons! You can look it up. (I did.) And now, I don’t feel so crazy after all these years. Actually, I feel like I am right where I belong.Where I was always supposed to be. In the grocery store. “We used to play ‘grocery store’ in the real store.​Like a lot of children in the ‘80s, Santa brought me a toy cash register for Christmas. Unlike most kids, it’s 30 years later I am still working with cash registers, though they are far more advanced than that plastic one!” —Ali Rouse Royster

Back then, I was thinking: Hey, you should be happy that I am safely inside the house instead of rampaging around the neighborhood stealing hubcaps and toilet-papering yards, but nooooo! It’s not like I was playing with matches or knives or kerosene. I mean, what’s the harm in a little grocery store, right? She was having none of it. The order had come down

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