The best thing to come out of the pandemic was curbside pickup. S’true. This is the only civilized way to visit places like, say, an Ikea. Ikea is perhaps the 6th ring of hell, with its confuzzling labyrinth, angry, seemingly unattended children and dictatorial shopping experience. But I digress.

When it comes to Costco, generally, we stick to online ordering. But sometimes a cruel and unusual urge takes me, to visit the dreaded dungeons with the lighthearted statement “I’m just gonna go see what they have in person.”.

Such an urge reared its nonsensical head yesterday. Like “seeing what they have in person” will revolutionize my shopping habits by adding new and heretofore unknown delights. As though, somehow, it will result in Something that is not only staggeringly, unthinkably desirable, but that, this elusive Thing, is worth being there in person to buy it.

I gathered my intestinal fortitude and ventured to Costco, on a Monday morning, in a blizzard, at a location that’s out on the highway instead of in town. Now, you might think that Costco, on a Monday morning, in a blizzard, in the sticks, is a slightly moderated version of hell. And you would be wrong.

It began with the fact that we had to scramble for parking. Cars convert people into single-minded maniacs. Christmas, doubly so. Add on the fact that it’s a Costco parking lot? May the odds be ever in your favour.

When we got in, there were no carts. The folks bringing carts in through the blizzard emerged less like people bringing carts and more like dog sledding teams bringing precious serum to our dying population. They were immediately mobbed. I almost checked out at this point, but I reminded myself that I was an adult, and a 4th degree black belt, and that my family needed a kind of cheese which is apparently impossible to get elsewhere. I whispered affirmations under my breath and went IN.

A little known fact about a Costco is that, once you scan your membership card, your cart converts into a battering ram. I emerged into a post-apocalyptic world filled with fuming people, like a machine where you insert a nice person at one end and a psychopath comes out the other, willing to fight to the death for a bulk bag of bagels.

Stopping in a Costco, however empty you *think* the aisle around you is, is a crime. If you do try to catch a breath somewhere, someone else will actually materialize out of the ether to yell at you.

It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve been, the thing you need is never in the same place twice. It’s a wack-a-mole for cheese. A guessing game, a blind thrust down a hall in hopes that, at the least, that brand of chicken fried rice that mom likes will be here. You rush around with your crumpled little list clutched like a lifeline, whispering “Let me not have ventured forth in vain.”.

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The concept of gladiatorial combat never went away. Costco is the Colosseum of our day, where we are both the fighters and the spectators, locked in a battle unto the death for eggs. The difference is, we enter the pit (mostly) willingly.

What I’m saying is, it ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.