*published May 4, 2006
As I cruise through my neighborhood Albertson’s, I look at the shoppers around me. The women all have a tense look as they feel their way through the produce, try to match their coupons with the brand names on the shelves, and pick through the meat section looking for chicken breasts for less than $15. If they’ve brought their children with them, the tension is doubled; their brows are more furrowed than the Saddleback Mountains.
It’s not like shopping for clothes or accessories. No one holds up a box of macaroni and cheese to admire how cute it is. We don’t look for a mirror to see what the salad does for our complexion. And only Martha Stewart imagines what the broccoli will look like on her plate. The rest of us are just hoping that it ends up in our children’s stomachs.
Most of the men in the grocery store don’t look as stressed. Theirs is more of a befuddled search. Heads tilted up, they read the signs to find the soup, then stand in front of the cans, shopping cart askew in the aisle, while they try to pick “Campbell’s Chicken Noodle” out of the rows of red and white labels.
I’ve recently had a couple of odd experiences at the grocery store. One busy Sunday, I returned home and realized that the jar of spaghetti sauce and can of diced tomatoes that were in my cart did not make it into my bags. Since I was fixing spaghetti for dinner, I really did need the sauce.
Taking my receipt, I drove all the way back to Albertson’s, hoping they wouldn’t make me prove that the items were actually at my house. The clerk couldn’t have been nicer, and told me to take the things from the shelves and go home to my boiling water.
I forgot about the incident until later, when I brought my purchases home from another busy Sunday in the store. As I put away the groceries, I found three yogurts and a can of olives that I didn’t buy. Of course, I came home just in time to start dinner, so I didn’t rush back to the store with these items, figuring that I would take them back the next day… which I forgot to do.
There are two possible explanations for these events. Either the clerks were so busy that one order blurred into another and items were mis-bagged, or the items were haunted and found their way into the wrong bags to make mischief.
No matter how it happened, somewhere in Placentia a woman tore her car apart looking for three yogurts and a can of olives, probably with a tense expression on her face. They’re still at my house, if she wants them.