Last Wednesday we ran out of milk. I didn’t have the energy to hump it across town to our usual grocery. So after school, the kids and I coasted downhill, cruised through a couple of stoplights, and made our way to the grocery store near our house. Normally I do my food shopping alone at 9 p.m. But I had just chugged a can of Coke. The caffeine, corn syrup and I were invincible. “It’ll be okay; the kids are older now,” I reasoned. “We’ll just dart in and out.”
Inside the store, we stopped at every end-of-aisle display, coupon dispenser, mylar balloon-plume, and gumball machine. “This place is AWESOME!!!” my kids kept saying. They turned in slow circles down the length of every aisle, their arms outstretched like Dorothy beholding the technicolor of Munchkinland. “C’mon, guys, we have our milk now,” I interjected. It was no use. They were under the spell of a giant rainbow that had exploded across every package in the store. “Mom, can we get this blue juice?” “Look at these pink princess rings!” “Whaaaat? Diego choco-cereal?” They begged me to buy things they didn’t know existed just twenty minutes earlier. I stood before them with a bag of onions in one hand and a jug of organic milk in the other. Out popped my nerdy inner middle-schooler, wearing nothing but a training bra and day-old “Tuesday” underwear. I gently pushed her aside. “There are window gels by the checkout,” I said. “Let’s get some for Halloween.” They set down their musical greeting cards and followed me, stopping only briefly at the DVD/energy drink dispenser along the way.
that dog is too much!
:::totally cracking up looking at these pictures:::
Mmmmmmmmm, BLUE JUICE!!! You know you want some!
So: the leaders of chemical addition workshops most often tell their attendees that it is the tee-totalers who most often cave when exposed to the sibyl’s lure to crash on the rocks and go nuts with no-no chemicals. Why? bc these poor greenhorns have never learned about MODERATION. Apparently, the French and Italians children, who have been “taught” by exposure from their parents’ or family’s wise use of alcohol, for example, to truly internalize moderation. So take those kids out into the Land of Sodom and Gomorrah for a good long exposure of blue Gatorade and Doritos – those little tender shoots need to get hardened off.
Ha ha! This was SO my experience w Lucas last week at kroger! I hadnt taken him shopping w me in almost a year. He was way more starry-eyed and unmanagable than he was when he was younger! I cant imagine it w two kids doing the same thing! I’m appreciating Relay Foods 10x more after that!