As I was leaving work today, my boss announced that we couldn’t drink the water anymore because it was contaminated with fecal matter (what is this Mexico?). So I ran off to tell Bowman and have Ellis so kindly give us a few bottles of water.

I figured I would go to the grocery store after my exam at three to pick up some food and some water, but I put it off to finish up the last of the work I had for my other class. As six-o-clock rolled around, I peeled myself away from the endless International News Communication podcasts and ventured to Harris Teeter.

I could see before I even pulled in the parking lot that mass hysteria had commenced. There was a brief line just to park. Once inside, people were running about everywhere, snatching cases of water off of displays and other various foods. I plodded around the bakery section looking for corn bread to accompany the dinner Ellis was making and watched the citizens of Greenville act as if this was the end of the world.

I called Ellis to inform her there was no corn bread, but that “people were fucking going crazy over this shit.” She said she already knew.

After selecting a few other things, I decided I wanted to see what the water aisle looked like. I came face to face with the entire front wall of Harris Teeter that had completely been emptied in a typical Greenville Frenzy. One lone bottle stood by itself underneath the strategically placed Brita filters and the Perrier water was left on the end, forgotten and sparkling. Just as I was about to pull out my lovely pink beauty and take a picture of this, a man behind me asked if I was looking for water. I turned around and was greeted by him and another woman. I then proceeded to pull out the best attitude Cary taught me how to have.

“This is ridiculous. Seriously, people are going insane. It’s just fecal matter in our water and it will be gone in 48 hours. I mean, hello, just buy a case of water, no need for 3 and 4, and then boil your tap water. Are we too lazy to boil water now and instead will be wasteful with plastic bottles?”

At this point the two innocent bystanders of my eruptive ‘tude chimed in.

“Well, we don’t know if it’s just going to last two days. People just want to be prepared.”

“I don’t know. You know what, I’m going to buy a case, but I’m going to drink the fecal matter anyway and nothing is going to happen.”

This is where I wanted to spout out, “This isn’t Y2K (ugh…sigh.) or Hurricane freaking Fran. Everything is going to be alright.” Instead, I walked away.

I took my case, Cheerios and Chex Mix (mmm…delish, definitely not on the post summer school be deliciously fit diet) and stood in line. An extremely tall black man lined up behind me and proceeded to tell some girl that he was going to get himself a bottle of liquor tonight instead of water.

I turned around and thanked him for being the only intelligent person in the store at that moment.

Fecal Matter people… boil your water, get over it. Life goes on. It was like that final “animal scene” in Mean Girls when the “girls have gone wild.” RIDIC.