...with a husband and 5 sons, I am truly outnumbered....stories and thoughts on life from a mom in a houseful of little men!

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Community in These Parts: day 28

We've been informed of an interesting fact of life in the South which we've not experienced yet.

Apparently, the stores are crazy with the slightest mention of inclement weather in the fore cast.  People head to the grocery stores in droves, filling the milk and bread aisles.  We hear it's frantic.  The shelves empty as bags of bread overfill in carts, and sometimes spill onto the floors.  Folks, already having secured their booty, hang around and visit with other folks, some of whom they haven't seen since the last bread and milk extravaganza.
Bread and milk.  It doesn't matter if you actually eat bread, or actually drink milk.  If there's a snowflake on the forecast, you run to the local Food Lion or Food City or Kroger. You buy bread and milk.  Around these parts, it's just what you do.  My guess is it's much more about community than about sustenance.
 
As extreme Northerners, there are few weather reports which cause us to run to the store in preparation.  I can think of a couple.  We went for face masks, duct tape, and a few other things in the face of a volcanic eruption and the threat of volcanic dust.  We may make (an air-conditioned) run to Food Lion during a particularly hot part of the inferno they call summer here.  One can't be low on tea to make into sweet sun tea.  We all have our standards I guess.

Community is a good thing.  We were never created to do life alone.  We all need to be supported and to be supportive, whether we realize it or not.  If a single snowflake in the forecast does that for people in the South, I hope there continues to be runs on bread and milk for a long while, whether people actually consume it or not. 

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