Grocery Stores

I may be in the minority...but let me just say it: I love to grocery shop. I know many would rather have a root canal without Novocain than do their grocery shopping, but I take a certain pride in my job. I always have. But I find the difference in the ways people shop most fascinating.

Some carry a small office with them, the front of the buggy filled with a drink, the coupon organizer, ads for the week, lists, menus and calculators. For them...this is serious business. These are the women who can buy a cart full a food for $.98 and get $29 in coupons for next week. Their families may be eating beef tongue and rutabagas this next week...but by god, it was next to free!

Then there are the women like me. (Of course, we are more reasonable.) I carry a calculator, but I never steer from that which I normally buy. I am fairly brand loyal and will tend toward making the same meals in a two to three month period and those staples are always on hand. I do not buy cookies. I do not buy soda, kool-aid or juice. I will usually buy one bag of chips or pretzels a week. Prepared foods? Not this girl....not if I can help it.

Then you see the other women...the ones who have done this for so long they no longer need a list...they know what they are getting without even looking. Or the ones who have just started into grocery shopping...either having just moved out on their own...or newly married. They study, read labels, try to figure it all out. In the end they do...because they shopped and cooked with their moms...they know what they need...it comes to them in the end.

But my favorite? The ones I really enjoy sort of coasting behind and spectating? The men. No...not the single guys who are there because they need some frozen pizza and pot pies....but the husbands. The guys standing in the isles looking at the shelves with a list clutched in one hand and a sort of lost stare. They know, you see. They know if they stand there long enough some woman will come along and ask them if they need help.

It is like a dog whistle. We see the stare, the list and we know that some woman is at home having sent her husband to the store for something...we have this image; she has just had surgery and cannot do this herself...and she is relying on him to bring home the stuff on that list. We hear the call....the dog whistle...that says, "Please help him...he knows not what he does." and he reinforces our nurturing nature...by just standing there and looking from the list to the shelf and back again.

So, well played. We walk over and say, "Can I help you? You look like you are having trouble finding something."

And they scratch their heads...and they laugh a bit...and they hand you this list.

Run.

Run now.

Because the second you take the list...you will be helping them through the entire store. But you are nice, so you look at the list.

Well, of course this poor guy is confused...silly man. You are in the vegetable isle looking at canned creamed corn and your wife asked you to get cornstarch. The next thing you know you are explaining to him how to pick out a fresh pineapple and how to check the price per ounce on peanut butter. Lessons he will not remember longer than it takes him to smile at the cute redhead cashier.

I learned my lesson many years ago as one of those wives. I had just come home from the hospital having delivered my first child. Having been settled in, my husband and his best friend offered to run to the store for me. I had not expected to be in need of certain feminine products and my husband gallantly offered to pick those up for me while at the store. "I have the best husband in the world," I thought.

It was about an hour later that I received a call from him. He explained that he was standing in the isle with Roger, his friend and a women who had stopped to help them and a cashier who had come over. They were all discussing the pros and cons of my situation having just given birth and now being in need of these products. They were now fully educated on wings, overnight protection and deodorizing products by these women, having talked about this for the last 20 minutes. They just could not all come to a conclusive decision and needed my final input on what I wanted.


Death...death would have been good.