Abnormal Groceries and Brand-Name Shame

You know how when people look in your cupboards or fridge without being asked to, you feel sort of -- naked? Or offended? As if they should beg your pardon? And how other people's cupboards and fridges seem utterly foreign?

You know how, if you have a choice, you hide generic and store brand supplies, instead putting brand-name cans and bottles out for guests? Which is why for hair products I began buying only Pantene because it was the only brand that if someone saw them in the bathroom it wouldn't embarrass me ("Aussie"? "BedHead"? "Nizoral"? "Pert"?).

You know how when you first start dating, you two go to all the best places, drink fine wine, gift the rarest chocolates, and then you settle in or marry and live like paupers scraping ash off burnt toast in dread of spending one extra penny?

Well, I'm giving all that up because now I grocery-shop online, and with the coronavirus hoarding shortages and shortfalls of this and that, one must accept substitutions for familiar name brands, allowing into my house, for the first time, strange new name brands and packaging at unfamiliar price points.

After unpacking my last grocery shipment I left the non-perishables out on top of the microwave not wanting put them away and could not figure out why, but now I think:

1) These brands are like strangers in the house and I have this weird need to get used to them.
2) This is my "store." Actually going to the store could be lethal, what with all these people scorning masks and wanting their freedom, so I've re-created a version of a "store" and enjoy the feeling of variety and wealth that was part of American grocery shopping.