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ROUSES.COM
9
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.
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
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