2016 Nov 26^th

There being nothing of any consequence on the Trump front today I offer this bit from “A Double Dozen and Six.”

Grocery Shopping

My wife and I used to shop for groceries together. I have always tried to be helpful with the household chores. I took the hamper of dirty laundry downstairs to the laundry room once a week so that my wife could do the washing. I opened the bedroom windows in the evening after the day had cooled off. I made a delicious crock-pot turkey soup. This required me to put two skinned turkey thighs into a crock-pot of canned chicken broth and carefully turn the crock-pot on high. As you can see, I am ever-so-helpful around the house.

I assumed that grocery shopping with my wife would be helpful to her also, and would have the added benefit of giving me an opportunity to put some goodies in the basket that my frugal wife would not ordinarily buy; tinned, smoked oysters for example, and smoked anchovies that my wife never touches. She refers to them disparagingly as “hairy dead fish.” I knew better than to ask her to get some for me so I thought to put some in the cart while helping her shop. That seemed a fair trade. It wasn’t a fair trade at all.

In the beginning (This is starting to sound like a Bible story.), I just pushed the cart wherever she wanted to go. That got old very quickly. I am impatient; pushing a cart around behind my wife while she toured the self-same aisle as many as three times…well, you can see the problem.

The next time we shopped together, she gave me my very own list and I got my very own shopping cart. I was told to put nothing in the cart that wasn’t on the list. Of course I didn’t get where I am today by following orders. I snuck a small jar of pickled pigs’ feet under the large size taco shells. But a problem arose when I had filled my order list. I had found everything on my list, and now I had to find my wife. I had seen her earlier, just in passing, but now she seemed to have disappeared. I went down the main aisle and looked down each of the wide cross isles. She was not to be found. I went to the main aisle on the other side and repeated the process. No luck. I went to the produce section, and then the meat counter, and still no wife. What to do?

I did what any intelligent husband would do under those circumstances. I got a cup of extravagantly expensive coffee and sat on a bench watching for her. OK, if she wants to play hide-and-seek, let her seek me for a while. Finally, it occurred to me that I had been sitting for about fifteen minutes and I wasn’t being sought. I then marched directly to the service counter. “I have lost my little daughter Susan.” I said to the worker there. Could you page her for me? She would be happy to do that. Now, blaring out over the loudspeakers came, “Would little Suzy Jones please come to the service desk. Your father has been trying to find you.” The last phrase was in a mildly accusative tone. Did it work? Oh, did it ever work! Within about  two and a half minutes, a very red-faced woman who claimed to be my wife joined me. She was in a high dudgeon. (Has anyone ever seen someone in a low dudgeon?)

I explained that I had searched everywhere for her, that I had even sat patiently drinking coffee waiting for her to walk by, and that I was becoming very concerned for her welfare. That last was ridiculous. Susan weighs just under one hundred and twenty pounds, but she can give a hard look that could send a pro tackle back on his heels. She bought it though. A man can get away with enormous offenses if he claims he has committed them only because he has his dear wife’s welfare in mind. That one fact has gotten me out of more scrapes…but that’s another story.

Now comes time for the examination of the contents of my cart. Did I get what was on my list? I certainly did. How hard could it have been? A dozen eggs were on my list and a dozen eggs were in my cart. But these were the extra-large eggs, not the large eggs that she claimed were a better buy. Five pounds of flour was on the list, but this was bread flour, not all-purpose flour. How was I supposed to know that she wanted all-purpose flour? How many different kinds of flour can there be? She rattled them off. We headed back to the flour section  and got the right kind. Ground turkey was on the list, but it was not “extra-lean” ground turkey. More returns. A pound of sugar was wanted, but not the “super fine” sugar I got. I quite naturally thought that “super fine” represented a better quality sugar than plain, simple, sugar. It does not. Fully half the stuff in my cart must go back to the shelf from whence it came. This was humiliating. I protested that she should have been more specific about what she wanted. She became specific about what she thought of men so poorly informed about the demands of cooking that they thought all flour was alike. I knew better than to belabor the point.

I went through the checkout first. While she picked up a magazine to pass the time I slipped the pickled pigs’ feet out of the cart and on to the endless belt just in front of the vertically canted tray of ground turkey. She won’t see them. I swiped my credit card and put the itemized slip in my pocket. I waited for her and we left together. The bags went into the car trunk. As I started the car she said, “I believe it would be better next time if you just helped me unload the car when I get home. Oh yes, I saw your pigs’ feet. I got a small tenderloin steak. I’ll let you fix the pigs’ feet any way you like for supper tonight. I’ll do the steak for myself.”

            We have an unspoken agreement now that leaves the shopping to her. I have not objected.