Ten Items or Less

I’m at the grocery store with the girls.  We have this huge-ass-honkin’ cart, with a bench attached to the front of the regular cart.  The thing is bigger than my minivan.  The girls are strapped into the bench seats, and in the cart is a pack of diapers, baking chocolate, vanilla and my backpack.  Each of the girls is clutching a box of popsicles.  Willow has the mini pops and Sophie has the ones that look like crayons.  I don’t like the store much, but it’s close and the popsicles are two for one.  There’s a nice looking man ahead of us, old enough to be a grandfather.  He sees the kids and sees the diapers in the cart and says to me, "You have THREE of ’em?"  (not sure why he picked three.  maybe he thinks Willow is too old for diapers or something.  OH WAIT–slaps forehead– it doesn’t matter because he is a total nutter!)

"No, I have four."

silence (interrupted by Sophie hissing at me, "Dat man can’t talk to you!")

"FOUR, JEEZUS, my wife couldn’t handle one!!"

"Well," I say, "it can be really hard no matter how many you have."

"I told her that some women actually have TWO  children.  But she was always afraid ours would die," he whispered the die part.

"It is an enormous responsibility," I say, starting to get that he’s a few bricks short.

"She always kept him bundled in the warmest room of the house, and boiled his food with a silver spoon for eight to ten hours.  And the herbs.  That’s not good.  You don’t know what’s in that stuff."

Now I see the condom (!!?) sticking out of his shirt pocket and take two steps back. 

"Mm-hm."

"But, she came from a paranoid family, and now the kid is a paranoid.  I tried to intervene, an intervention."

And now it’s his turn at the register (large apple juice, even larger listerine) and he begins to complain to the cashier about something nonsensical. 

I wonder if his wife is responsible for the condom in his pocket.

*****

Time to clean house.

Why won’t my template change work?  It shows up on the preview, I publish it, and it looks like the old way again.  Oh well.

1 thought on “Ten Items or Less

  1. jenny r

    that is a pretty funny story. a fill-in-the-blanks funny kind of story. More funny than the fact that I can’t stop thinking of the officer with “‘roid rage” and I thought the same as you. Poor fella.

    Reply

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