“We don’t need a cart,” I said to my kids as we walked into the grocery store. “We only need a few things, and we can carry them.”
On the way to the produce section, I saw bread. “Oh, yeah, we’re almost out of bread,” I thought aloud as I handed my daughter two loaves of bread. I walked over to the oranges and placed six oranges into one of those flimsy bags and handed it to one of my sons.
I quickly walked past several aisles, noticing that I could actually read the signs now that I have glasses. I turned the corner and grabbed dishwasher detergent and handed it to another son, along with dish soap.
By then the orange bag had exploded, and two oranges rolled across one aisle. A random woman scowled as she stepped around my oranges, and I told one empty-handed son to pick up the two oranges. I quickly turned around and continued shopping. I handed a large bag of toilet paper to my oldest son, who for some reason started to do a comedy routine, pretending like it was heavy and that he couldn’t see over the top of it. (He could.)
Walking quickly causes my children to “hop to” and follow me, because otherwise they will be left in the dust (and they don’t like being lost.) So they quietly jogged behind me as I walked at a fast clip. Did I say quietly? I meant noisily. And did I say that this was during a school day, where people knew that we were either playing hooky or homeschooling?
I didn’t think about how I was going to carry 6 yogurt containers that my husband wanted, back when I said, “We don’t need a cart.” I stacked them like one tall tower in one hand, using my chin to hold the top of the tower in place. “Oh, wait, we also need eggs,” I said, but all of my children’s hands were full, so I had to use my hand that wasn’t being used to hold the tower of yogurt. Just try checking whether the eggs are cracked with one hand next time you’re at the grocery store, and you’ll understand how it was. And imagine that hand has a crumpled list of groceries in it, a much shorter list than the assortment of items my children and I were now carrying.
“Okay, we’re done!” I said to the kids, walking quickly to the checkout before either the yogurt pillar or precarious eggs fell to a ruinous end.
“Mom, the breads are opening!” yelled my daughter in dismay as she showed me that both bread bags were partially opened, with the clip thing off them. I told her to calm down and follow me. We placed everything on the conveyor belt, and I gently shook the bread back into place and put the clip on it. The cashier looked at me in amazement, since she was trying to fix the other bread bag but couldn’t. I said, “Here,” and I took the bag and shook the bread back into place, replacing the clip. The cashier said nothing as I walked out of the grocery store with my children.
