Random Moment: An Ode to the Familiprix

Familiprix Classic: Direct From the 80s EconoWrap Christmas Paper. For My Familiprix Gifts.

I'm very fond of the Familiprix near my house. In my area of P.S.Chuck (Point St. Charles- I am trying to make this happen,) life is sustained by three places. There is the depanneur. Rather, there are several, but they are interchangeable in their quality of stocking everything but the one thing you went there to find. Even when that one thing is butter. Which they usually have, but not when you're halfway through a recipe, although you can content yourself with sandwiches in packages, green sugar, balloons, panty hose, cat litter, lentils, and a giant liter of green hair gel in a tub. And porn. If you're hungry, there's Centre Pizza, serving Crispy Delight chicken and ice cream. 

And when you need pills or something a little classier than the dep, there is the Familiprix. It is not a drugstore in the mode of Pharmaprix or Jean Coutu. Rather, it's what I imagine the old-timey drugstores of black and white movies would look like if they were allowed to order things from the present day. They carry one line of everything, and only one line of everything, and you learn to like that one line, because really it's your fault for forgetting to stop off at the Pharmaprix. Apparently Cover Girl won the battle for make-up supremacy, while those bug-eyed Russ creatures have a lock on the stuffed animal gift rack. I am letting you all know this, so you can figure out where your Christmas presents came from. 

It all sounds like I don't love the Familiprix, but I do! I do, because the lack of choice is liberating. I go there, and I am only confronted with one kind of chips, and one kind of pencil, and am not paralyzed by the agony of abundance that affects the privileged and the neurotic. Because, in Mother Familiprix, TAMPON CHOOSES YOU. 

And I like it that way.