Monday, October 15, 2007

Fun with Groceries

Rachel had to stay after school today so Graham and I went to the grocery store after I picked him up from school. He wanted to go look at all the fun Halloween stuff but I decided he needed to stay with me and help.

My dream is to be the only one in the grocery store shopping for the rest of my life. If I had a wish from a genie, that would be it. There's always those couple of women who have hours to shop and need to look at everything and read the labels. Okay, that's me sometimes, but at least I try to stay out of people's way and not park my cart in the middle of the aisle so that others can't get through (deep cleansing breath). Anyway, I realized what time it was and that I had about 7 minutes before I had to pick up Rachel from school. So we rushed to check out and I decided that instead of standing in line it would faster to go through the self checkout line.

Normally, the self checkout is fast and I'm pretty good at it...but only, it seems, when I have all the time in the world and about three items to check out. This was not one of those times. It wanted to know if the item was bagged and if not was I going to bag it. In my haste and frustration I told Graham to get the full bags and put them back in the cart. I also told him he could scan the gum I allowed him to get. He began to do both.

I was so frustrated trying to scan my groceries and in such a hurry that I was not paying attention to anything but getting everything scanned and bagged. I heard Graham say "uh oh" and assumed that he was referring to my problems with it taking an eternity to scan the groceries.

Now let me pause here to impart a life lesson. When your child says "uh oh" always, always find out what the "uh oh" is for. Even if you think you know, ask. If they're standing in front of you and drop their gum out of their mouth and it lands on the floor and they say "uh oh", go ahead and ask them "what's uh oh?".

Graham then asked me if I was frustrated. They've learned that when mom and dad are frustrated it's better to wait for questions and comments until mom and dad have gotten their self-control. I replied as nice as I could, "Yes, Graham. I'm a little frustrated. These groceries don't seem to want to scan." He was wringing his hands and it looked like he was really in a dilemma.

He said, "You know when you told me to put the bags in the cart?"

"Yes."

"Well, I put them in that other ladies cart that was right here (at the end of our line) and she left with that cart."

I had just paid for everything. He had no idea what she looked like. Finally, the nice young man who worked at the store heard our situation and helped us look for the lady. She was gone. We looked at the receipt and I was able to go get all the groceries that was missing. Thank you, Wal-Mart.

Fortunately Rachel's teacher has a great sense of humor and we had a good laugh.

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