…and so it began.

It started so….simply. The CDC said to stay away from Romaine lettuce, until they figured out why it was giving the bloody flux, dropsy, the grippe or whatnot. I shrugged and headed off to work… just a couple of hours, and then I would have a nice 4 day weekend for Thanksgiving.

On the way home, I stopped by the grocery store to pick up a couple of last items for Thanksgiving. “Huh, looks like all the romaine is gone.”

Then I noticed it. The mood was…ugly. The shoppers were already blasting adrenaline, and in a surly disposition. This didn’t help. In fact, it pushed them over the edge…

This ain’t Black Friday, son…it is worse!

I was surprised at the lack of response at the store. Bust a shoplifter, and usually there were three squad cars roaring in for the kill (hoping it was a hot 17 or 18 year old perp). Now…nothing. I fled the store, and that is when I found out how bad it was. The cops didn’t come, because this scene was playing out everywhere. And not just the grocery stores. Riots at various and sundry sandwich places….rioting vegetarians and vegans at salad bars. I even saw a burning Sweet Tomatoes restaurant as I tried to make my way home.

“Go for the Arugula!”

Never got there… had to go by too many Panera Bread locations. The primal fury of the quasi-hipster mobs was something to see. How those skinny jeaned, bearded, Planet Fitness members managed to flip over the fire truck, and tear the crew apart…. no, I don’t want to know. I cannot erase the images from my already shaky mind.

The few of us that managed to make it to the farm (corn and soybeans, thank God it wasn’t a lettuce farm) tried to piece it all together. The cops were overwhelmed right away, and the states were collapsing before they could even think about calling out the National Guard. And what were they going to do, with their mess sections already in mutiny. Communications went next…everyone frantically checking their devices for the store that would let them get crazy Aunt Sophie’s @#$%ing salad mix. The net and the cell towers never stood a chance. Transport was impossible, as the roads became a single, extended road-rage episode. Hell, even domestic rabbits and chinchillas went straight at their owner’s throats.

“Fluffy…I am sorry. We, we…are out of lettuce.”

In the quieter moments, when we are not trying to scratch in the soil – hoping for one last head of butter lettuce – I marvel at how fragile our society was. A wanderer did come by and mention that he had heard a few hydroponics outfits in rural Canada may have survived. Come Spring, we may send a scout up that way….but I hold out little hope.

Not sure why I am penning this, in the last pages of a scavenged spiral bound notebook. Vanity, I suppose. Maybe I just hope it will serve as a warning, should the survivors rebuild a civilization someday.

Don’t shit where you grow lettuce.