I think people get used to things and then don't know where to find things when something changes.

I know I like to get used to some things - like knowing where to find the light bread in your favorite grocery story. Someone asked me the other day why I call it light bread. I think it is because that is what my parents called it, the same reason that I still call "yams" sweet potatoes and children "young uns" - call it a genetic response, if you will.

Anyway, I went into a grocery store in Galax, Va. the other day. This store had everything. For a matter of fact, they had so much of everything that I couldn't find anything, kind of like the whole place was just a kaleidoscope and someone kept twisting it around every time I found a pattern I liked.

There were sections and sections of baked goods, canned goods, meats and things one should never see in a grocery store. But hey, this is America, right? Land of the big and obtrusive, with acres of parking lots full of abandoned shopping carts and parked vehicles and crying babies and shouting people and smiling people and crazy people and hurried people. Everything you've ever felt or seen tossed into the blender to make parking lot emotion mush.

Then you go in the store.

I had just stopped in to pick up a loaf of bread and some sandwich meat and something to wash it all down with, but I came out instead with empty hands and a headache.

Just take me back to Sparta, please. At least I know where the milk and cheese and light bread are.

What is life if one spends most of it hunting for the light bread? So I went to another store, this one had to be better. It was a "super" store. I had even less luck in this store, as I ended up walking among women's clothing, housewares and other assorted goodies.

I almost bought a breadmaker, thinking that this could never happen to me again if I started making my own bread. But alas, the breadmaker cost about $34.95 more than I had in my pocket and that doesn't even count the flour, milk and whatever else goes into making bread.

After wandering around for the better part of the hour, I saw someone with a store smock on and walked on over; this was a struggle for me, as

I hate to ask for directions.

"Just go around the chainsaw display and turn left at the animal crackers, go around that isle and then turn back to your right. You can't miss it," the pimpled 16-year-old told me. By now I had found my way to sporting goods and didn't really want to leave, but having only enough money to feed myself, I opted out of purchasing the new "rattling lure" or the five-pound economy pack of plastic worms in assorted colors.

What a place for light bread, I thought as I walked around the chainsaws.

I should explain that I suffer from directionus-challengus, the disease that affects many men. I have a hard time asking for directions, and then I try to pretend like I understand perfectly, when in fact I couldn't even find the animal crackers.

Soon I came upon a fellow sitting in the floor crying near the cookie displays. Upon asking if I could help, I learned that he had come into the store the previous Tuesday and was still trying to find the light bread. His wife had most likely left him and his children had forgotten his name.

Upon hearing this, I offered my sympathy, wished the fellow well and decided that maybe the best thing I could do would be to just backtrack and get out of the store. I would have offered the man a tissue, but that would have meant me circumventing several miles of treacherous shopping isles in unfamiliar territory. I would have rather just torn him off a piece of my shirt.

After pondering for a time over continuing my search or just finding my way out by leaving a trail of cookies on the floor, when I noticed a smartly-clad woman with a buggy full of merchandise and a crying baby. She also had a four- or five-year-old kid in tow, who was busily snatching at cookie bags as she wrestled to keep him in check and still feed the infant, push the cart and clutch her oversized purse and diaper bag to her side.

Here's my ticket out of here, I thought. The buggy was full and she looked a bit disheveled. No wonder my father always waited out in the car while my mother took me shopping, I thought. I followed the lady into one of the 18 checkout lines in the front of the store and then slipped out underneath an exit sign with a sigh of relief.

I have heard that these big stores are putting a lot of smaller stores out of business. I find that hard to believe after shopping both ways.

I remember shopping at the IGA, the A&P, Mrs. Kegley's and Amburns grocery. Or maybe I am just not ready for "super shopping." Here in Sparta, I guess you had Smithey's and Ben Franklin and the usual compliment of small proprietary stores.

Not to say that there aren't a number of small stores remaining here that still offer good service. You may save 36 cents on your purchase at super-duper shopping world, but I will gladly take that loss to keep my sanity. I saw an advertisement in the paper the other day for a psychiatrist. The starting salary offer was around $90,000 per year.

That's a lot of 36 cent shopping trips, if you ask me. If I had to go in there every day, I would have to put one on retainer just to keep me from wanting to wipe that smile off the face of that annoying little "yeller feller." My grandfather said that of a T-shirt I used to have as a kid with that smiley head on it. In a smaller store, a customer is treated like a neighbor, a friend, or at the very least, a person.

And you don't have to worry about walking 17 miles around a bunch of stuff you don't need to buy some light bread. Upon telling a good friend of mine about my experience, she simply said, "That's half the fun." "If you call getting lost in a sea of people and non-locatable merchandise the first half of the fun, I would hate to have the second half of the fun," I noted. Perhaps the rest of the fun is paying for all of the stuff you bought that you really didn't need because you couldn't find the darn light bread. Maybe I will order my light bread off the Internet instead, a place where I type in "light bread" and a search engine tries its luck at finding it, rather than me growing old before my time wandering around the super giant happy mart.

After all of the excitement, I found that I wasn't all that hungry anyway. Maybe those big stores are good for something, even if it is just taking away a man's appetite.

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