My patience runs thin when the depletion of my food pantry accidentally
coincides with the impending death-threat of a light dusting of snow, which
sends people into paroxysms of fear that they will be housebound and
famine-stricken if they can’t access a loaf of bread and a half-gallon of milk
for a day or two.
This happened a few weeks ago when a fleeting snow squall
was in the forecast. We swung into the grocery store before the movies to quickly
grab some fruit and cold cuts, oblivious to the forecast of a dangerous
imminent storm (which left one thirty-second of an inch of snow on the ground, while we were inside the grocery store;
go figure), and were met with the nightmarish shopping frenzy of desperate food
hoarders.
I leaned over to my husband and muttered in dismay, “Amateur
night at the grocery store.”
He laughed.
Some people love to grocery shop. I was one of them, back
in, oh, 1975, when my mother wisely capitalized on my ’tween-aged naïveté and
dropped me off at a succession of grocery stores in order to do her food-procurement
bidding. For years, while my mother earned graduate degrees and focused on
homework and classes, I was the workhorse of my family’s food supply needs. I actually
enjoyed making lists, collecting coupons, and manning my overflowing shopping
cart.
Each week, Mom dropped me off first at the grocery store,
then the produce store, then the butcher shop to acquire the food needs of a
busy family of six. In my later teen years, as I drove myself to grocery
stores, I even picked up a hot guy! Make that, I engaged in a casual flirtation
with a very good-looking butcher, who I eventually dated briefly, until his
Greek parents got wind of it and put an end to his seeing a non-Greek girl.
Those were the days of triple coupons. And for fun—for fun!—I clipped coupons, because it
thrilled me that I could earn triple the value for them. Nowadays, burned out,
I opt instead to spare myself the hassle and lose out on the money and not be
bothered, shame on me.
Years ago my sister-in-law joined a coupon club. She had a
frighteningly massive assemblage of ravaged coupons, piled high in a box that got
passed amongst her club cohorts. I never understood the idea of purchasing excessive
supplies for which your house has no storage, just to save a few cents. Back
then, any time she invited us over, she fed us freezer-burned ice cream,
because her deep freeze was jam-packed with gallons of stale Bryers she’d gotten on discount. Hardly
worth the savings when the food becomes inedible.
As we shopped during the seven-minute snow squall a few
weeks ago, after navigating clogged aisles filled with shoppers and carts while
trying to grab the few items we sought, we arrived to find a check-out that was
easily eight people-deep in each lane.
Anyone who’s been grocery shopping for forty-odd years can
tell you that choosing the grocery lane in the we’re-all-gonna-die pre-storm frenzy is a fine art. You could
eenie-meenie-miney-moe it, but that’s for newbies. It’s best to apply critical
thinking skills, which I unfortunately failed to employ that night. At first I
attempted the savvy shopper plan: me in one lane, my husband in another, and
whoever gets there first you jump over with the spouse.
But he’s all about fairness and even-stevenness, so didn’t
want to play that game, insisting we stick to one lane. Yawn….Which is what I ended up doing, because I chose totally
wrong in my forced-haste decision. Not only did I pick the lane with no
bag-packer helping out—critical for dire shopping times—but I ended up in the
mucho-painful “Hi! I’m new but I’m
learning” aisle, even worse.
This means a cashier who doesn’t know produce codes and thus
takes quintuple the amount of time to ring through items, with the man in front
of us having a cart overflowing with, yes, you guessed it: produce. All with
the clock ticking on the movie we needed to get to. An unforgiveable grocery
shopping rookie mistake for which we paid by missing the movie previews and getting
lousy seats. When you’ve been shopping since the Carter Administration, you
should know better. Clearly I foolishly yielded to his non-grocery shopping ignorance
at a critical time. Never again.
I’m still scarred from being stuck in a legitimate snowstorm
frenzy at grocery store, after back-to-back-to-back blizzards when my kids were
under the age of four. I stressed in line for two hours as my three children attempted
ENT-threatening gymnastics on every facet of my cart, filled with what meager unwanted
groceries remained in the store (no doubt repulsive Vienna sausages and pickled
eggs in a jar amongst them).
Nowadays to gain control over my shopping experience, I
always do the self check-out. And bag my own food. And just to add some spice
to the mundanity of grocery shopping, I opt to check out in Spanish. Nothing
like multi-tasking and learning grocery store Spanish while doing the chore
that bores me to tears. The clerks always think I’m a ninny who accidentally
got stuck in Spanish mode, and come running to save me. Which can be necessary,
if you have no idea what celery or asparagus is called in Spanish. But when I tell
them I did so voluntarily, they look at me like I’m nuts, shrug, and walk away.
Actually I do “get” this primal need to feed, just in case.
Something about being potentially snowbound makes me want to cook all sorts of
things I certainly don’t need to ingest. And reinforces some
survival-of-the-species demand to provide, to be warm, to gather ’round and
enjoy Mother Nature-induced chillin’. And chillin’, I’m all in favor of.
Especially if it’s not while cooling my heels in line at the grocery store.
Next time you’ll find Jenny Gardiner buying
groceries online. Or at www.jennygardiner.net
In the meantime, great news! Book 2 of my IT'S REIGNING MEN series, HEIR TODAY GONE TOMORROW will be released in the next week or two--please keep an eye out for it.
Also if you sign up for my newsletter here you get a free copy of my novel WHERE THE HEART IS!
and some time soon I'm going to reissue Anywhere but Here---I'll keep you posted.
Accidentally on Purpose (written as Erin Delany)
Compromising Positions (written as Erin Delany)
I'm Not the Biggest Bitch in this Relationship (I'm a contributor)
And these shorts:
Idol Worship: A Lost Week with the Weirdos and Wannabes at American Idol Auditions
Idol Worship: A Lost Week with the Weirdos and Wannabes at American Idol Auditions
1 comment:
I worked at a grocery store in high school and college--paid my tuition--people will shop if there's a foot of snow on the ground.
And, I'm quite the coupon queen amongst my friends.
Post a Comment