Lost in the Supermarket

Thanks for reminding me! The Grocery Store Short-Circuit:

I wasn't born so much as I fell out

Still waiting on mini-Mart to make their grand opening. I know the masses are getting restless on this one (not to mention mom and dad), but hold your horses! They're a-comin'.

I came in here for a special offer

The day was last Monday. Megan and I were doing our weekly meal and grocery planning, an exercise that mostly consists of looking up five star recipes on http://allrecipes.com/, copy/pasting them into a shared Google document (shared, so we can both edit it), and then organizing and consolidating items to make shopping easier. Then we shop, iPhone in hand, referencing lists and looking up replacements for any ingredient we can not find. We are the blazing hot youth, the future shoppers of today.

I can no longer shop happily

Now that the situation is laid flat, on graph paper, plain as dogs, the story can begin. It's not a very good story, and maybe I should have mentioned that when I started, but I didn't, so sorry. Anyway, I breezed in to Strack and Van Til with a fierce look smeared across my face. Megan was at home, laid up with a case of the babies, and I was on a speed run. You see, we use Zipcars and you pay for those by the half hour, so when we drive we want to force brevity. I had mentally planned my route through the store as well as some alternatives in case of emergencies (spills, overturned carts, crashed HoverRounds) and, like a chess game, I was keeping myself focused on three moves ahead.

Hearing that noise was my first ever feeling

The first item was cilantro (coriander to our English readers) located 20 ft. from the true store entrance (I don't count Sucker's Alley). My mind was already working out the intricacies of the deli counter when my walking self sent the distress call. The 'tro was not where it should have been. I snapped back in to present time and evaluted the situation. Where there should have been 'tro there was only green onions, hmm. Next on the list was leeks, which I thought should have been nearby, but as I scanned the vegetable mister all I saw were green onions and their green onion friends. Half of the vegetable aisle was just green onions, and my brain couldn't handle it.

and the silence makes me lonely

I walked in circles for probably fifteen minutes going over the same ten thoughts:

1. They must be out of all those vegetables
2. Green Onions!?!
3. They CAN'T be out of that many vegetables, this is America!
4. Maybe I'm not in the right spot
5. Maybe I don't know what a green onion is?
6. I'm going to check the whole aisle again
7. Green Onions??
8. If they were really out of this stuff why not leave the shelf empty?
9. Maybe this IS cilantro??
10. NO! Don't be an idiot! Start the checklist over again!

But at last I finally had to accept that they were, in fact, actually out of half of the vegetables I needed. I had to accept that some moron thought filling the whole place with green onions was better than NOT doing that. And I had to accept that my inability to cope with said decisions cost me another half hour's worth of car time.

I extended my time on the Zipcar with Megan's iPhone and finished shopping with an airy, puzzled look where my tenacious one had been.

And since I got it in your heads... (you only get one free listen... use it wisely!)

Lost In The Supermarket - The ...

And another one you never knew you knew...

Green Onions - Booker T & the ...