I have a spouse who makes dinner every night. I wash the dishes and clean the pots and pans but as the years have progressed I’ve learned less and less about the kitchen. Oh sure, I know where the refrigerator is (as my bulging waistline can attest) but as far as working most of the appliances or knowing how to make anything, I’m clueless. The odd thing is that I still watch every cooking competition show there is. From Top Chef to the cake building challenges, I’m in. My poor spouse always says to me, “You’re watching all these shows, doesn’t it inspire you to try to make something, anything?” My response is always the same, “No.” So when I have to go to the grocery store it’s always a nightmare. A grocery store the day before Thanksgiving – Don’t Get Me Started!

While my guy knows every aisle and what’s in it at a grocery store I know nothing. Honestly, the whole place could be filled with feminine hygiene products and I’d know about the same as I do about grocery stores. My spouse is always disgusted when I get home from a grocery store because I didn’t use the coupons or I bought yet another jar of something we don’t need (I don’t know why I always pick up a jar of mayonnaise when I’m at the grocery store when we hardly use it but the three current jars in the pantry that seem happy to have found a home in my opinion.) Try as I might, this is his domain and I never get it right so why he would send me the day before Thanksgiving is beyond me but into the breach I ventured.

It was 9am so I figured I would be screwed but oddly enough, once I got in there were not the mobs I thought there’d be. I was pleased. Everything I do in life is at a maddening pace. I don’t know how to live any other way. I am determined to get exactly what I need in a store (whether it’s a grocery store or tire store) and not meander through picking up a can of chunk pineapple to read the nutritional facts. If we need it, I’ve got it in 2.5 seconds, it’s in the cart and I’m onto getting the next item. Yet here were all these people seemingly moving in slow motion as they stared at the groceries on the shelves with seemingly no regard to me who was trying to bob and weave to get my items and to the checkout first as if I was on a timed game show. Who were these people who had all this time to be looking at cucumbers like they were a painting in the Louvre when I had to get romaine lettuce and get out? I had the three items on my list that my guy had told me to get. I double checked to make sure they were exactly what he had told me as he had dictated the list to me like a remedial student who would never learn. And just as I made my way to the checkout I saw it, mayonnaise on sale. In defiance I picked up a jar and put it in my cart. As I got to the self checkout there was no line, it was like a holiday gift to me. Little did I know that I had picked up the one carton of eggs that had no barcode on it. Argh, as I looked around helplessly there was a gay guy manning the self checkout that saw I was as out of place as if I was on a football field. He went and got another carton with the barcode on it and looked at me as if to say, “Oh, the poor guy that is with this guy.”

The good news is that I got everything I was supposed to get and the crowds other than annoying weren’t as bad as I thought but still don’t send an amateur to do a professional’s job. Not only did the three jars of mayonnaise start their own union in my pantry with the new fourth jar I bought, I found we had a dozen eggs at home all ready so they are now sitting stocked in our refrigerator like some display at the supermarket. We’re all good at some things this is not one of them for me. A grocery store the day before Thanksgiving – Don’t Get Me Started!

Read More Scott @ www.somelikeitscott.com