Non-Discriminatory Shopaholicing

I love grocery shopping. While the domestic freak club is understandably low on the membership scale, I am proud to be part of its ranks. My mom doesn't understand this abnormality, and maybe in 10 years when I have additional mouths to feed besides my own (and trust me, any mouth that shares even a fraction of of my genetic makeup will require plenty of...ahem...food for nutritional purposes only) this fun weekend activity will morph into a parasitic necessity that drains the life from my very bones and turns me into one of those ladies you see on TV with frizzy hair and orange lipstick and 12 children hanging precariously from any latching on point of my body, and I will want to run myself over with the little motorized terror-cart that the geriatrics use mainly to piss us walkers off.

But since the closest I can conceive of actually having more than one mouth to feed is maybe a really super hardy houseplant that does not require any special grocery items or sunlight or frequent watering, then I will hopefully maintain my love of the grocery store for years to come.

After I have perused each isle filled with foods that have too many calories to purchase, but just enough calories to justify wistfully and lovingly caressing the packaging thereof, and after I have loaded my cart with enough cans of tuna to feed all of the late Bob Barkers spayed and neutered cats (R.I.P), and after I have scrutinized every last loaf of honey wheat bread to find the one with the latest sell-by date despite the unpleasant reality that it will somehow manage to mold in exactly three days anyway, I head to the one place in the grocery store I only simply tolerate, and not explicitly love. That is, the check out line of Sunday-rush hell.

I don't think raw egg makes a very good marinade for things like cans of ravioli or chocolate-cookie-crack-crunch-a-doodle-do ice cream, so I prefer to ring up my own groceries and bag them in a manner that does not indicate I've just preformed my own lobotomy. The self-checkout is the one place I can relive the glory days of my youth working as a cashier at the best darn little market in central Indiana, and I take my ringing and bagging speed very seriously.

Now, I know the self-checkout, just like social welfare programs, are available to anyone in the store who plans on paying for their goods. However, just like social welfare programs, there are a select few who consistently and blatantly violate their right to a better check-out experience, and they are the grocery shopping equivalent to the crack whore who keeps having babies just to get more food stamps that she will sell for her next fix. Or whatever. I'm no expert.

I had not one but two such self-checkout crack whores in front of me today, laboring slowly over their bulging carts as my frozen onions melted and started growing sprouts out of the cereal box below. The first was a large loud lady who, despite having her tween son there to dutifully help her through the check out experience, still insisted on swatting his hand out of the way as she stalled before every single freaking item to inspect the packaging. Her cart was full to the top, ladies and gentleman, and four or five people made it through the opposite line, not to mention the full service lines, before she even got half her cart unloaded. I would like to think she was checking for trans fatty acids in order to replace those items with healthier fare, but after the sixth box of Friday's appetizers passed her inspection and carefully made its way into the gaping mouth of the plastic bag, I gave up on determining her motive.

The second guy was no better. He had ransacked the produce section and was meticulously pulling out one of every type of unrecognizable vegetation that the store had in stock. He would pick up two very inedible looking clumps of something that was perhaps dug out of a hole next to a chemical plant, and place them both on the scale. Then, realizing that they were different items, he would remove one. Then, woops!, he doesn't remember what this particular bit of fiber was called so he would have to ponder it for a minute, (no joke) with his head resting pensively in his hand. On and on it went.

Eventually the produce monger and the nit picker were out of the way and I was onto mine. I still enjoyed my shopping experience, but I sure as hell whipped through my check out line fast enough to make Superman jealous.