//------------------------------//
// Meijer 
// Story: Silver Glow's Journal 
// by Admiral Biscuit 
//------------------------------//

Meijer

After lunch, Christine followed us back to the parking lot where Peggy keeps her car, which I have not seen before. It was called Cobalt, and it was smaller and sleeker than Sienna.

I wanted to get a close look at it, because I never got a chance to get a good look at Econoline or Sienna. It has rubber tires and black wheels with shiny discs behind them that Peggy said were the brakes. She said that it had shiny wheels like Sienna that it wore in the summertime but right now it had winter tires on it so it wouldn't slip in the snow.

She said it was considered an economy car—all vehicles which are small are called cars. The parking lot is full of them, and a lot of them look like their owners have abandoned them. They're just covered in snow, like a hibernating animal.

It only had two doors, so it was difficult to get into. Christine said that she would sit in the back, and squeezed herself behind the seat, then let me get in.

This seat was not made for a pony. Peggy helped me adjust it into a sorta comfortable position and put on the seat belt, then she went around and got the car started. I didn't like the seat belt too much because it just tangled around me and I didn't think it was doing anything and Peggy agreed, but she said that I should have it on today and then she'd think about whether I really needed to wear it.

It has a built-in record player that started playing as soon as Peggy turned the key. She asked if the music was all right, and I told her that I had never heard it before.  She said it was a singer named Adele.

It took a little while to warm up. She said that she couldn't go until the windshield was clear of fog, but I didn't see any fog at all, only condensation on the glass.

The main street that runs up campus is made out of bricks, and it is very bumpy. Peggy said that they were always fixing it throughout the spring and summer, and I wanted to know why they didn't just replace it with a new street if it was always in need of repair.

Christine said that it was part of the character of the campus, and it also helped keep people driving more slowly.

We drove for maybe ten minutes, first through the downtown, then up a big hill and past a whole bunch of houses. Then we got to businesses on both sides of the road, and finally turned into a big parking lot in front of a huge store that said Meijer on the front in big letters.

Halfway to the store, I started to wonder how we were going to find the car again. Peggy said it wasn't a problem, because she could click a button and it would flash its lights and honk its horn, and she demonstrated it for me.

When we got inside . . .

I can't even properly describe it.

It was like a whole city had been turned into a market, and then a roof had been put over the whole thing. There were shelves as far as the eye could see, and they were completely loaded with things. On one side was fresh food, and on the other there was a counter with jewelry and a big aisle leading to the back that had more shelves in the center. Big signs hung from the ceiling to tell you where things were because otherwise you could have gotten lost.

There was so much to take in and so many smells and sounds that I stood there trembling like a scared filly, until Christine finally reached out and touched my shoulder.

I knew I would be okay if I stayed close to them.

The floor was slippery, and I had to be careful of my footing. I wanted to look at all the fresh food they had: normally, the markets only have winter crops and late fall crops available, along with not-so-fresh pasture grasses. Earth ponies can keep food good for a long time, but not forever. My granddam said that sometimes when she was a filly they'd run short in the wintertime and had to scratch through the snow to find enough to eat and it was those years that her mother and father argued about why they hadn't wintered further south.

Christine and Peggy had a wheeled basket that was called a shopping cart, and they went through the food and bought some beer and wine and they asked me if there was any kind that I wanted so I stuck my hooves over the edge of the open icebox so I could see what they had.

All the different beer had names, and I didn't know what any of it was, until I found some Oberon. Then they got some snack food—all of it had names, too. Doritos and Little Debbies and Entemans. The Doritos came in a shiny bag, while the others were in rectangular boxes like a bakery box.

We had to go all the way to the back of the store to get to the shampoo, and they agreed that instead of walking down the main pathway, we could go through the clothing area because it had carpet that gave me better footing.

There were so many clothes. Any tailor I know couldn't make this many in her whole lifetime. I asked Peggy where they all came from, and she said that there were mostly made in foreign countries.

We got back to the beauty supplies, and there was a whole aisle devoted to shampoo that was all different colors and smells. I know a lot of mares are vain, but humans only have hair on their heads and a few other places, so I wasn't sure why they'd be so interested in such a variety. Plus they had shelves of hair dyes, but they were mostly plain colors like brown and black and blonde.

There wasn't any pony to help me choose. Back in Equestria, a spa pony would bring samples and let you sniff them and try them out, and recommend what would work best for your manestyle and coat, but there wasn't anypersonbody here to help.

I looked up and down the shelves trying to find something that would be appealing to me and then I found a bottle called Mane and Tail Shampoo, and it was even on the bottom shelf where it would be easy for a pony to reach, so that's what I got.

It seemed like a lot of store to have just bought those few things. Christine said that normally they'd get more, but since they had just come back from their homes, neither of them really needed much.

There were lots of little stands where you could buy your purchases which probably makes the market more efficient. Peggy put the things we were buying on a little belt that drove them along to the salesperson (for the human version of things you usually change pony to person). She passed them by a device that Christine said was a bar code reader, and a computer tallied up all the items.

When it was my turn, I had to show her my passport before she could sell me beer. She got a kind of funny look on her face because she couldn't read it at all, and she had to call over another man and they decided it was okay. She apologized but said that there were rules about who could buy beer.

I used my plastic card which is like my student badge but instead of having my picture on it it has a silver eagle. There was a pen on a string that you had to use to sign your name, and the salesperson gave me a dirty look when I held it in my mouth to sign my name.

Peggy pushed the cart in the parking lot and when she got close to where Cobalt was she pushed the button again and it honked and I turned my ears in that direction and I knew about where it was.

Her little control could also make Cobalt unlatch its trunk, and she put everything in that while me and Christine were getting in Cobalt.

When we got back to the dorm, Peggy said that she was going to take a nap because she wanted to go to a party later, and asked if I wanted to go, too.

I probably should have said yes, but I was still stressed out from Meijer, so I said that I would rather read some more and then go to bed early unless it was very rude to turn down the invitation. She said it was fine if I didn't want to.

Aric will probably want his book back by Monday, so if I am going to read more of it, I should do it now. There are two stories that look particularly interesting; one is called Bears Discover Fire, and the other is called Boobs (which is another name for breasts).