It's still absurdly hot, here in the Lone Star State, so when Sweetie started muttering about her grocery list, this morning, I threw myself on the grenade and volunteered to go. No sense both of us getting all sweated up, and there wasn't a lot of produce on the list so how bad could it be?
So I hied myself over to yon neighborhood Kroger, parked way the hell out where only the wild shopping carts roam, and snagged a tame one from a corral, dodging minivans on my way to the front door. There, I applied all my ninja skills to fend off assaults from various child sports organizations, all trying to sell me the same “value card” that my wife had already purchased from some neighborhood kid the day before.
Inside, things went pretty smoothly. I ducked and weaved, tossing things from the list into my cart, per my wife's carefully-organized list. And then… the pasta aisle, where a tidy 40-ish mother smiled and chatted with four kids of varying ages spread out across the entire aisle. As I approached, hoping to squeeze past the pack to the spaghetti noodles, Mom tried to get all the kids moved to one side. I smiled at her and moved my cart to the other side – at which point the teenaged boy pushing the cart moved it to block my way. His (approximately) six-year-old brother with Down Syndrome put his hands on his hips and, with an exaggerated roll of his eyes, said, “Geez. The other side, dork.”
I just about lost it.
So I shifted back to the other side and slipped past. Mom said, nodding toward the teenager, “I don't know what his problem is. He has his driver's license.” I muttered something along the lines of, “Now that's scary.”
When I was ready to check out, I spotted a line where a very elderly lady was just wrapping it up. I unloaded my stuff and waited while the poor woman tried every way to swipe her credit card except the right one. Poor dear, all hunched over with osteoporosis. She finally got it sorted out and, as she shuffled away behind the bag boy pushing her carts, I thought, I should be so lucky as to be able to do my own shopping if I get to be her age.
I finished my own transaction and was pushing my cart across the parking lot when I spotted a shiny orange Corvette headed down the row toward me. As it passed, I noticed that the driver was the elderly woman from the checkout. She had her gangster lean on and one wrist draped across the top of the steering wheel!
I wonder… would a snazzy sports car help my back and neck problems? Maybe I can get my doctor to write me a prescription for Cooper Mini, or something.
3 comments:
Welcome back! Grocery shopping is always fun if you try to face it as part of a sociological observation.
Besides, when else are you going to see Granny getting her ride on? Certainly not at work where everyone is boring and predictable in their grey-scale civic clone.
While I was in the freezer aisle, I heard a man telling his wife, "Get a package of them Jimmy Page turkey links." I'm sure he meant Jimmy Dean, but the notion of Led Zeppelin's guitarist having his own brand of sausage products stuck in my head. As I shopped, the advertising slogan "Jimmy Page sausage: It's ZoSo good!" came to me.
I thought the pun might be a bit obscure for the main post, but it kept me amused all the way to the parking lot - at which point the elderly woman in the Corvette became the most entertaining moment of the day.
I think your comment (above) made me laugh harder than the post.
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