Remember When We Had No Choices?
I went to the grocery store yesterday and I was completely confused and it bothered me. I just needed a few simple, or so I thought, things. We were out of milk, eggs, soft drinks, mustard and I thought I’d reward myself with a small bag of candy and a cup of coffee from the Starbucks stand in the store.
I didn’t realize you can’t just buy a quart of milk, a dozen eggs, a carton of Cokes, a jar of mustard and a bag of M&M’s without it taking at least an hour and that doesn’t count standing in line to check out.
When I got to the milk case, I wanted a quart of milk. I didn’t want to decide between 2%, 4%, Skim, Low Fat, Non Fat, Organic in each of these varieties, whole, soy or almond. This didn’t count the choices from free range cows. Do some cows have to pay for their range? I grabbed the one with the longest expiration date, and headed for the dairy case for eggs.
Eggs? Brown? White? Organic? Free range (they should get with the cow and make a deal) Dozen? Eighteen? None of them had a picture of a chicken on the carton which made me suspicious.
Two hundred feet of soft drinks on one aisle. Bottles or cans? Big bottles or small ones? Glass or plastic? I just wanted a six pack of Cokes but…Coke Zero, Diet, Diet with Lime/Lemon/Splenda, how about made in Mexico. Twelve pack? Twenty pack? I ran to the mustard aisle.
I felt like I was in the movie Groundhog Day. Yellow mustard. Brown mustard. Spicy mustard. Mustard with horseradish, Grey Poupon, jars, squirt bottles and best of all: Stone ground. I pictured two people with rocks grinding little mustards into a yellow paste.
By this time my blood sugar was in the toilet, and I won’t even talk about toilet paper, so I went to the candy aisle for my M&M’s. I give up. When M&M’s added peanuts, I thought it was the first sign of the Apocalypse. Now with all the choices, who knows
I finally got to the check-out line. Self? Less than 10? More than 25? Alcohol and cigarette in a special, over 21 line and don’t try to fool us because we make you show your ID if you look under 97. And speaking of cigarettes. My dad smoked Camels. Just plain, non-offensive, middle of the road, Camels. At my store there are twelve types of Camels.
After I got a cup of coffee…don’t even go there, I went home and dropped on the sofa and told my wife that I wanted to relax and watch some television. Gracious lady that she is, she offered to turn it on for me. Did I want to watch, local, network, cable, HBO, Showtime, Skinamax, music channel, Hispanic, Korean, or what?
I gave up and decided that it was time for me to go, so I thought I’d just shoot myself. Then I couldn’t decide if I wanted to use my .45, my 40, 38, shotgun, deer rifle, that little 22 I won in a poker game or….
