The Last Carton of Eggs

A modern day slice of mythic Americana

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Sara loved going to the grocery store with her father. It was dumb, sure, but it had been a tradition for as long as she could remember and she liked the idea of having him all to herself sometimes. She was at that age where boys were still gross and, honestly, she wasn’t quite sure about girls either. Besides, after all this time her father would still be lost without her. Not a trip went by where she didn’t have to remind him that they needed more Mac n’ Cheese or a another bag of Doritos.

She grabbed a cart from the stall in the parking lot of their local Safeway. It had always been her job to push the carts, even the ones that had that rickety wheel that sometimes got caught while she was in mid-stride. As they walked toward the front door, an older man in a tattered brown coat sitting near the entrance called out to them. “Excuse me sir, do you have anything you can give me…for food?” Sara’s father let out an almost imperceptible sigh. Sara only recognized it because she’d seen it so many times before. It had become part of their shopping ritual. Someone was always outside the store asking for money, and her father almost always obliged. He pulled a $5 bill from his wallet and handed it over. The man gave the customary reply.

“Thank you…and have a blessed day.”

They walked inside and Sara noted the gate that separated the rest of the store from the entrance. She’d seen people walking out through the gate instead of in and had heard the store alarm go off. The action was usually followed by a visit from one of the security guards. One of the arms of the gate appeared to be stuck closed. As they approached, it stayed in place while its counterpart swung open. She looked up at her father who seemed unfazed, so she thought nothing more of it.

There was only one checkout lane open. It was backed up with shoppers and carts halfway down the frozen food aisle. The self-checkout lane was available but packed as well, a single employee running back and forth to help with the backlog. Typical Saturday.

The pair started in the produce section then wended their way up and down the various aisles. They picked up a few staples then stopped in front of a massive locked cabinet. Within Sara saw various brands of laundry detergent and soaps, shampoo, and even health supplements. Her father mumbled something about the price of protein shakes as he pressed the big red ‘assistance’ button to the left of the case. This was nothing new. They did this every week. But for some reason, this time Sara wondered why.

“Daddy, why are some things in a locked case and other stuff isn’t?”

Her father half-shrugged. “So no one steals it. This kind of stuff gets stolen a lot.”

“Why this stuff? Most of it’s soap.”

“Well, there’s a black market in the City where they sell it. There might be other places around here where it gets sold too.”

“A ‘black market’?” Sara replied.

“Yeah, see, a black market is a place where stolen goods are sold.”

“Why don’t people just buy those things here at the grocery store? Or even at another store?

“I guess they can get it cheaper on the black market.”

“Cheaper than the grocery store…?”

Sara’s father looked at her with a combination of pride and sadness, like watching a small child who’d just figured out that there’s no such thing as Santa Claus¹

“Yeah…I guess so,” he replied absently as he smashed the ‘assistance’ button again.

Several minutes later, Sara and her father were again on the move. Eventually, they made their way to the egg section. They stood there in front of the refrigerator staring at mostly empty space, the shelves barren save for a single container of 18 ‘cage free’ eggs.

“Why are these eggs so expensive?” Sara said. “Two weeks ago they were like $7.99. Now they’re $12.99.”

“Supply and demand,” her father replied.

“What’s ‘supply and demand’?”

“Well, it means that there’s a certain amount of stuff. That’s called ‘supply’. And the ‘demand’ is people’s desire to buy that stuff. The higher the demand or the lower the supply, the more the price of stuff goes up.”

Sara looked at the last container and then at her dad. “So, the price went up because the supply is low, I guess.”

“Right.”

“Do the prices just go up…automatically?”

“No, the company that sells them does that.”

“So, they don’t have to? Someone just decides to do it?”

“Well…no, they don’t have to. But that’s just how the economy works. When you don’t have a lot of something, the price tends to go up. You see, big companies are corporations. And corporations have to make a profit so they can…I don’t know, pay back their investors with dividends and higher stock prices.”

“What?”

“It’s not important. The point is they want to make a profit…well, a bigger profit. So they raise prices.”

Sara frowned. “But prices have been going up for a long time, haven’t they? You talk about it all the time.” She looked around the store and eventually pointed toward the chip aisle. “Chips are a lot more expensive than they were just a couple of years ago. And there’s always lots of them on the shelves. Why is that?”

“Well…that’s what they call ‘inflation’. Prices just go up, kind of, naturally. It’s what happens when people have too much money to spend.”

“So, prices go up because people have too much money? Isn’t that a good thing if people have more money.” Sara’s thoughts drifted back to the old man panhandling outside the store.

“Yes, but…let me start over. If there’s too much money in the economy it can force prices to go up. Like if people start making more money they might buy more things.”

“Do we have too much money?”

“No.” Her father shifted uncomfortably. He wasn’t prepared for an economics lecture with his 12-year-old. “What I mean is, too much money can devalue the currency. That means it takes more money to buy the same amount of stuff.”

“So, if people make more money, then the money isn’t worth as much, so stuff costs more. Is that it?”

“Yeah, well, that’s what they tell us anyway.”

“Do prices have to go up?”

“No…corporations raise the prices. Just like when the supply is low.”

“Or demand is high.” Sara replied. Her father half-smiled and nodded.

Sara looked around again. Something was off but she couldn’t put her finger on it. Finally, her gaze landed on the nigh empty egg shelves.

“Why aren’t there any eggs if there’s so much other stuff here? What happened to all the eggs? Did everyone else buy too many? Maybe that’s why they raised the prices.”

Her father shook his head. “The reason there are so few eggs is because of the Bird Flu going around. It’s called H5N1, I think. It’s hitting California really hard right now. So they can’t use eggs from any flock of chickens that have the flu or have been associated with the flu. I’m not sure how they determine that. But the difference between this and regular supply and demand is that this is a crisis.”

Sara furrowed her brow as she tried to assimilate this new information. “A ‘crisis’?” She replied. ”Like the Pandemic? Was that a crisis?”

“Yeah, just like the Pandemic. You remember some of that, right? Or it could be a war or just bad economic times where people need help. Whatever it is, it tends to affect everybody, more or less.”

“What do people do in a crisis?”

Sara’s father beamed a bit on the inside. This was an excellent opportunity, a teachable moment. A perfect way to help his child learn about kindness and community. Now, if he could just do it without screwing it up.

“People come together during a crisis and help each other. Remember last year when we lost power on our block for a few days? Mr. Leder had a gas generator that he used to power his big deep freeze. He let the neighbors keep a lot of our frozen foods in it so the food wouldn’t spoil. And when his wife died, the whole neighborhood brought food after the funeral and Mom offered to help him with laundry and household chores.”

“Do you remember what I told you about 9/11?” Sara’s father continued. Lot’s of people showed up in New York to help clear rubble and look for survivors. Some of them even got sick from the dust. But they did it anyway. And after Hurricane Katrina, hundreds of boats showed up to help find survivors and save people who were trapped on top of their houses. You see, that’s what people do. They come together and they help. That’s what community is. That’s what America is.”

Sara saw the pride in her father’s face. It made her feel good, like maybe she was part of a community too. A community where people come together and make life better for each other. But she had to ask…

“Well, what do the corporations do in a crisis?”

“Eh…you know…mostly raise prices.”

Just then an alarm sounded, it’s call blaring throughout the store. Someone was walking the wrong way again.

1. There bloody well IS such a thing as Santa Claus, no matter what that kid says.