I Could Get Used to This

Husband and I dropped by the store for a few things last night. Imagine my surprise when "a few things" actually meant...well, a few things.

Four apples. A half gallon of milk. One package of lunch meat. One loaf of bread. A package of walnuts. Four ears of corn. Cotton balls. Two servings of yogurt.

Who are these people and what have they done to my shopping habits?

In the good old days, every trip to the grocery store started with six gallons of milk and six boxes of cereal, then spiraled upward from there. I would stare longingly at the single ham slices as I tossed a whole ham into the cart, and bypassed the two-to-a-package pork chops for the Family Size! Great Value! multi-pound pack.

Simply getting everything into the cart was something of an art form. Canned vegetables were stacked in cases in the bottom of the cart, eggs and bread in the baby seat, and the cereal rode underneath. By the time I reached the frozen food aisle I was rearranging the cereal boxes to form side rails so the frozen peas didn't slide off the top.

It was a magnitude of foraging that most of my fellow shoppers had never witnessed.

"I have four teenaged boys," I found myself explaining as I maneuvered past the retired fellow in the bread aisle who stared, horrified, at me and my selections (one loaf of nine-grain for my healthy-eating guy, a loaf of white for the ones who HAAAAATE that crunchy stuff, two packages of bagels for after school snacks, hamburger buns).

I was That Woman in the check-out line, no matter how quickly I unloaded the cart onto the conveyor belt.

"Four teenaged boys," I muttered over and over like an exculpating mantra.

So last night was a new experience. We took our few things and sauntered to the express check-out. The checker made polite conversation, and didn't even call for back-up to help sack our purchases. The receipt was only six inches long, far below my personal record receipt that maxed out the yardstick.

I could get used to this.