Ice Ice, Baby

Over the last few months I’ve gotten in a semi-daily habit of ordering a bunch of iced coffees and iced teas from Dunkin’ Donuts via Uber Eats. I get five total, all pumped with a few blueberry or raspberry shots. Once a week or so, I’ll treat myself to the DD grilled cheese, which is fabulously minimalist: not greasy, the cheese caramelizes beautifully and it’s only 420 calories.  The coffee gives me a boost throughout the work day and I love the tea but let’s be honest, in these days of days it also just kinda gives me something to look forward to.

But since the storm has left so much ice laying around I haven’t called upon my Uber Eats delivery angels, as I’d feel like an asshole asking them to slip and slide over a sheet of ice to bring me some coffee & shit I really don’t care about all that much anyway. Which reminded me of back in Oxford, Mississippi, in 1995 after an ice storm had covered the entire town in a layer of ice. You can probably guess how prepared any town in Mississippi is about these things in the first place.

I was sitting around my apartment with my roommate Rylo, bitching about wanting to have food delivered but none of the usual suspects - and by “the usual suspects in Mississippi in 1995” I of course mean “Dominoes” – were delivering because of the dangerous ice on the roads. One of us remembered hearing that the local, shitty grocery store, the kind that barefoot women could smoke in while doing their shopping, had a delivery service. (James? James Grocery Store? James Food Center, something, can’t recall the name exactly but if it’s still operating I will be, in a word, amazed.)

“I don’t know,” Rylo warned me, “it’s kinda being a dick asking them to come out with all this ice everywhere.”

“Nah,” 23 year-old me said, “I’ll just ask, what’s the worst they can say?”

It turns out that the worst thing they could say was to inform me that their usual delivery service was for senior citizens and the disabled, and, particularly with the incapacitating weather, was I a senior citizen or disabled? (Said to me over the phone with a curiously high amount of doubt, I might add here.)

I thought about all the bags of insanely trashy food I could get with just a little bullshitting, but a severe look of disapproval from Rylo had me begrudgingly hanging up the phone.

You’re welcome, healthy delivery folks from (insert name of local, shitty grocery store here)!