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“Remember,” I said to Paul, upon seeing yet another truck trundle down the driveway, obliging us to put on pants. “When FedEx trucks used to mean something?”

 

“What are you talking about?” he said in that tone he uses when I bring up things that have no relevance to anything we’ve actually been talking about. Like, “Look, a chicken!” or “There’s a dead mouse in the tack room.”

 

“FedEx delivery trucks.” I replied in the tone I use when I think non-sequitur remarks are the most obvious form of communication. “They used to be a rarity. They used to be exciting. I’d look up and see one and think, ‘Oh, wow, I wonder what’s coming? Maybe somebody sent me flowers, or it’s a sweater I ordered. Now, it’s…’ I waited to finish my observation until Paul stepped out onto the front porch and took over the burden of the heavy cardboard box being carried up the steps by the driver, “A big box of Chewy. A month’s worth of preventative urinary tract infection cat food.”

 

Paul stared at me with that look to see if I’d finally finished.

 

“I’m just saying Fed Ex has lost its glamor, that’s all.” I replied and indeed hadn’t finished.

 

“That’s because of Covid,” he explained. “When we were locked down and didn’t want to go to any stores. That’s when we started getting most of our stuff from Amazon.”

 

“But do we need to keep doing it? I feel like we’re a store, now, getting deliveries every day.” I queried. “It’s gotten to the point that I’ve gotten to know the drivers so well I ask how their mother’s gallbladder surgery went.”

 

Paul ripped open the tape on the box and began loading the designated pet food drawer by the stove with the tiny cans of orange labeled cat food. “Well, I guess if you want to take time out of your day to go to the grocery store and buy 200 cans of Purina cat food, sure, go for it.”

 

Paul got his wish and I remained silent. There was a weighing of good and evil duking it out in my brain. Did I want to continue to support Amazon, and its history of shameful employee conditions, or did I want to use more gas, expensive as it is, and leaving more of a carbon footprint, to drive to the grocery store just for cat food? In the end, on this particular evening, FedEx won. It had to do less with being a moral dilemma and more about comfort

 

Because staying at home I could remain pants-free.