One For The Road
Going to the grocery with Don is like going to an art museum with anyone else. It takes a while. First, we have to cruise the lot at Woodman’s for just the right parking place, which has to be close to the door by the liquor department where most of the electric carts are. If we don’t get the first handicap spot in a reasonable amount of time, I drop him off there, park, and meet him inside where he waits in his scooter cart like a racer at the starting line.
He has a system for going through the store. First, he dawdles past the bins where the Clearance and Closeout items are. He’ll consider buying food that he’d never even look at if it were regular price. I’m firm about some things, like no eggnog in August, nothing he can’t pronounce or doesn’t know what it is, and things with too much salt. He’s tempted by anything tomato, by crackers in crushed boxes, and by oddball shapes of pasta.
Next, he drives between the bread aisles and the flower cooler to the day-old bakery rack to check if there’s anything there he can’t live without. While he’s debating over yesterday’s muffins and sad-looking cookies, I nab a loaf of seedless Rosen’s Rye bread, the only bread he really likes, but we can only buy one loaf at a time because loaves that have been in the freezer and then thawed are “too soggy on the bottom” and therefore don’t make good toast. Toast is important.
Then it’s on to Produce. He checks the price of tomatoes-on-the-vine; if they’re reasonable, he’ll squeeze a few and pick out five, no more, no less, to take home. If there are green beans, I know I’m in for a long wait because he picks out a pound and a half of green beans one by one. No, really, he picks out each and every bean on its own merits. I get to speed-grab the broccoli crowns and bag them while I wait. Brussels sprouts get the same royal treatment as green beans, each little mini-cabbage selected and bagged. I know better than to choose the big, sweet onions. He has a special touch for bruises on them; I can’t seem to pick the right ones.
The Meat department’s easy. We stop for a sample of the meat patties some local guy is always flogging at the edge of the department, then Don tootles off to the freezer case where the “reduced for quick sale” meat and fish packages are. It’s rare for him to find something there, thank goodness. Since his dad was a butcher, he goes slowly down the cases of fresh meat—not that we plan to buy any, he just likes to look.
If there’s a lady with cheese samples, we have to go down that way. Otherwise; he dodges out of the cooler area because it’s too chilly in there for him.
By then my patience is wearing a little thin, especially since I’m a “grab and go” kind of shopper. So I brandish the list at him and say, “You keep cruising for samplers, I’m going to find the stuff on here. I’ll meet you up by the bottled water.” Then I dart off to zoom up and down aisles, tossing things in the basket, crossing them off the list. I’m usually at the rendezvous point long before he is, and I always know why.
See, we shop on Fridays. That’s the day that the pizza lady hands out samples in the frozen pizza aisle, and Don has a ploy to get extra pieces. He puts on his sad puppy face and tells the nice lady that we can’t have pizza at our house because his wife has to watch her salt intake, so the only pizza he ever gets is from her tray. This is not the truth, but one look in those sad blue eyes and the poor pizza ladies are helpless. He’ll gobble up three or four pieces, and then when he sees me at the far end of the aisle he starts to leave, and she’ll give him “one for the road.”
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