Everybody's had an embarrassing moment at the supermarket. Movies and TV shows have shown us countless examples of the unfortunate soul whose condom or hygiene purchase gets shouted out over the intercom for a price check. The best ones are the ones you see that are less obvious, but all the more fun. Even more challenging is how to deal with them when they involve you.
My own first questionable grocery visit was years ago the day before my first date night in my house since I'd broken up with my long-time ex girlfriend. I had promised to make my guest dinner. My cooking skills meant that dinner was going to be either a spaghetti dinner, a Mac N Cheese from the box dinner (and I'm talking the powder cheese Kraft stuff, accept no substitutions), or Lucky Charms dinner. Given that the object of dating is to pretend to your quarry that you are, in fact, worthy of snogging, coming off as an adult in this endeavor was key, so spaghetti it was!
Fresh bread for the garlic bread was placed in the cart. Spaghetti noodles and a jar of sauce were next carefully selected. I even snagged a can of minestrone, whose picture made it look positively gourmet, to heat up and pretend was hand-crafted. Though not a real fan of alcohol myself, I know folks often enjoy a glass of wine with dinner so I snagged what I guessed was something people would drink. Then, in a moment of sheer hope, I chucked a box of condoms in the cart. It was only on the way up to check-out that I saw the awesome deal on the drain cleaner and remembered that cleaning up the house might also be warranted.
It was the last purchase that really completed the morbid image.
*beep**beep* fresh bread
*beep**beep* Spaghetti and sauce
*beep**beep* minestrone
*beep**beep* wine
*beep**beep* condoms
*beep**beep* Draino
What kind of bizarre Faulkner short story had I just become here? The checker didn't seem to notice anything more than the pressing need to see my ID. Wouldn't the combination of items make asking for my asylum release papers more in order?
In that instance I just gave my ID and felt silly. More recently I've taken a different tack and just laugh it off myself. Megan introduced to my limited diet the awesomeness of uber-greasy, chicken-and-cheese-only-thank-you, quesadillas. Our weekly grocery visit usually includes a stop at the Jewel-Osco (your standard American supermarket) for standard groceries and a second visit to a smaller ethnic produce market for our green goods. By "our green goods" I of course mean Megan's green goods. Since the store catered in large part to the Latin American members of our neighborhood I figured this would be the best place for the tortillas. At the check-out a small voice by the name of Hershey beckoned me to add a chocolate bar to the purchase. After the pleasant young Latino lady rang up my wife's more sensible purchase-cornicopia of produce she rang up my two items: tortillas and a Hershey bar.
"I'm making Chocolate Tacos," I informed the lady.
We all laughed, but a few weeks later I found myself buying tortillas again and again the damn Hershey bar at the check-out got me. This time it was the checker's turn to ask.
"More chocolate tacos, huh?"
It probably ought to bother me that at that store I'm now known as the gringo who makes chocolate tacos, but the more I think about it, the more I wonder how they'd taste.
