McIrish, who firmly believes himself to be perfect, does the grocery shopping for our household. As he is the primary cook, this works pretty well. However, he often forgets that the kids no longer like a certain type of granola bar, or that we stopped buying whole milk 17 years ago. He also cannot seem to remember to buy me Ben & Jerry’s Peanut Brittle ice cream, which is not only grounds for divorce, but also for justifiable homicide.
I suggested that we have “Family Grocery Shopping Hour” so that those of us whose needs aren’t being met by the steel trap memory McIrish thinks he possesses will have no one else to blame but ourselves. His response: “Do we have to?”
Okay, he has a point. I am incapable of being serious in a grocery store and often pretend to wash my hair in the hydrating mist that squirts out over the veggies. I put items in the cart just to see if he’ll notice: pig’s feet, laxatives, Depends. The children also regress; the 17-year-old princess crawls under the cart and inches it away with her hands, pretending she is invisible. Both Princess and I love to be pushed on or in the cart, which makes for quite a display and much hysterical wheezing.
Dearest Son, who is a dignified 14, ignores us only to beg for foods high in fructose and white flour. “Please? Please! You said I could have these SugarPopCakeProductsWithExtraJimmies!” When I assert that I wouldn’t say yes to such poison with a gun to the back of my head, he complains about the unkind universe and stomps away, muttering death threats and fondling the Little Debbie’s
Meanwhile, Firefighter McIrish pretends not to know us, leaving the cart at the end of each aisle and racing down with breathtaking efficiency, tossing in items with lightning speed, only to have me replace them with the brands I prefer. “Generic tissues? Don’t you love me anymore?” (At this point, the answer is probably no.)
Exhausted, filled with loathing, we return home, find some PopTarts we forgot we bought, and indulge. Happiness restored!
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