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| It's the Simple
Things That Make Life Sweet Grocery shopping with the one you love By John Jantsch I don’t even like Pop Tarts that much…really, I don’t. Yet somehow, my wife consistently blames the speedy disappearance of said item on me. Now, I’m no lawyer but the evidence used to make this accusation is pure hear say coerced from snitches who, shall we say, have a motive to finger someone else. This long standing, but as of yet unsolved, string of tart disappearances recently led my wife to announce that I would no longer be allowed to venture to the grocery store without chaperone. “Oh no mister, I’m going with you today,” she said one recent Saturday morning. It seems she had decided that the solution to all of our problems was to assure that no Pop Tarts and for that matter no highly processed, smartly packaged food of any kind would enter our home again. So off we went. Initially I had planned to just casually slip the odd Ho Ho or similar contraband into our cart without notice. But my wife is pretty sharp and as fast I could slip an item in she found a way to slip it out. I want to publicly apologize to the grocery stocker who undoubtedly found the double stuffed Oreo’s and fudge sticks randomly discarded throughout the produce section. As this push and pull experience wore on it became rather annoying so my wife drew upon a new tact. “Why don’t you go and get some strawberry yogurt and I’ll just keep going, OK,” she suggested. That’s not such a bad plan I thought, I mean yogurt on the whole is a kind of disturbing food but as I think it fits roughly into the dairy category it must be shelved somewhere near the ice cream. As I rounded the dairy case my wife’s cunning came into full view. I stood there in marvel of the dizzying array of choices of yogurt. I needed strawberry yogurt that much I knew but was it lite, more lite, fruit on the top, fruit on the bottom, fat free, reduced fat, fruit partially and randomly placed, blended, not so blended, I can’t believe it’s really yogurt yogurt, pseudo yogurt, 10W/30 yogurt… Somewhere around 20 minutes passed as my wife approached to find me paralyzed by my inability to choose a strawberry yogurt. “Here’s the one the girls like,” she said reaching over my shoulder. I looked in our basket and was stunned to find that she had made it through the entire frozen food section without obtaining one single Mexican entrée. “Almost done,” she said in a particularly annoying tone. “Oh, no, I have to go over to the bakery section and get some things.” There is hope I thought. The bakery section is home to the donut. Maybe one of those chocolate swirl sprinkle lemon filled jobs. “Dear I need you to go and get some you know whats” Now, I have four daughters and out of guilt or some sense of duty when I’m asked to run to the store to pick up some of those, well you know, those things, I hold up my head march out the door and get some. Women really seem to appreciate the gesture of a man doing this duty. I remember the fond look and approving smile one female 7-Eleven clerk gave me as I was carrying out this same type of mission a few years ago. I would not be surprised to learn that she still thinks about me to this day. I gave my wife a suspicious look and shuffled off in search of my assigned item. She knows this will take some time because there is absolutely positively no way I’m going ask someone where the female aisle is. You know the nightmare where the checker gets on the microphone. Frank, we got a guy up here needs some feminine personal hygiene items, says he wants the jumbo economy pack. Chilling isn’t it. So I wandered off and finally moved stealthily down the sundry aisle. As I approached my quarry I could feel the eyes of every other shopper burning in my back. I kept my head down and tried to appear as though I was making a thoughtful decision from among the various options. I gained no insight from the diverse terms and descriptions emblazoned on the packages as benefits and merely grabbed and stuck in my coat what appeared to be the best buy for the money. I finally caught up with my wife as she was preparing to check out. I watched with some amount of despair as one healthy item after another slid lifelessly across the checkout belt and into our bags. But then I saw it. There it was, partially obscured by a gaggle of Brussels sprouts, a 12-pack of strawberry Pop Tarts: The ones with icing on the top, my very favorite. You know, I’ve been married to this woman for almost 18 years and I still swear it’s the little things that say I love you the most. John Jantsch is a free lance writer, business owner and father of four girls. He lives in Kansas City, Missouri and can be reached at 816-561-3931 or john@JantschCommunications.com |