i love going to the grocery store! i mean, don’t get me wrong, it sucks a whole lot. but it’s great. i love going shopping for groceries!

there are so many colorful and interesting characters at your neighborhood grocer. if you’re say, bill gates or oprah winfrey, and you frequent this site (which i’m sure you are) and you have some underling do your shopping for you, then you just don’t know what you’re missing.

for instance, tonight i witnessed this man who looked like he just walked off the set of “dog the bounty hunter” with one of those dainty baskets slung over his arm, gracefully picking through fruits and veggies in the produce aisle, all the while singing abba’s “dancing queen” in a high falsetto voice usually only reserved for celine dion or boys whose mommies breastfed them well into their teens. quite a surreal sight to see such a behemoth of a man caressing an apple so delicately, seemingly unconcerned with the fact that he had the voice of mickey mouse: “you are the daaaancing queeeeen, young and sweet, only seventeeeeeen…”

and then. just. let me tell you this, ladies. there’s nothing wrong with being forty. i plan to be forty myself one day. but if you’re forty you need to accept that you’re forty. there is just simply NO excuse for being forty years old and wearing pigtails. none. i don’t want to hear it. especially given the fact that the offending forty year old had maybe four teeth in her whole head. unless you’re auditioning for the remake of hee haw and you had to inexplicably stop by the grocery store on the way to the audition there is just no excuse for it. or maybe you’re on your way back to the “home.” then you can be out in public at forty-something, toothless and in pigtails. otherwise, take your damn hair out of those pigtails. you’re not fooling anybody.

the other thing that’s fanfuckingtastic about the grocery store is the ninehundredsomething year old men and women who get in front of me in the 12 item or less line with 50 items paying by check and presenting twenty super saver double coupons and also asking for a price check on each of the aforementioned 50 items. you know, just to be sure that can of pickled beets really, really is 89 cents. because. i don’t know, they can’t read. or maybe they just think that having lived to the ripe old age of ninehundredsomething entitles them to certain privileges that us young whippersnappers haven’t yet attained. and you know what? they are damn right. when i turn ninehundredsomething i am going to pull my hair up in pigtails and point my toothless self to that line with 52 items and i DARE, i just dare anyone to say a damn flibbiddygibblet thing about it.

old people, man. they kill me.

so. oh! and the other thing about grocery stores that i love? i absolutely LOVE it when parents don’t mind their children in a grocery store. because, you know, why bother? it takes a village right? ha!ha!ha! oh and how we laughed when little damien ran his cart into the back of my heels for the ninety-ninth million time tonight. it was great fun. but don’t worry i’m sure his mama managed to fish him out of the lobster tank at some point tonight.

seriously though? if you’re going to take your demon spawn to the grocer, at least pretend to keep an eye on him. because if you don’t, i cannot and will not be held responsible for hanging him by his Barney suspenders from the ceiling fan while celine dion sings “my heart will go on” for the seven thousandth time on the loudspeakers near said ceiling fan while you go running around frantically looking for your little angel while he spins round and round high above the pace picante sauce just past the bread aisle. because while you may think it’s just so, so incredibly adorable that he climbs the shelves like they’re monkey bars and turns the produce aisle into his own little batting cage, i most assuredly do not. and i also do not appreciate having to give him the “death stare” while reaching around him for a grapefruit, trying in vain to find one he hasn’t been playing baseball with for ten minutes while you absentmindedly diddle the cucumbers, trying to decide if you want to make a salad or perhaps just buy one as a substitute lover to fill those long, lonely nights while damien’s daddy is out getting drunk and playing cards with the boys. and besides, it makes me feel bad about myself to give the death stare to a four year old. it makes me feel like the witch in hansel and gretel. but i’m not above dishing it out if i have to. even to a four year old.

i really like grapefruit. and his heart most assuredly won’t go on for very long at that height and that speed. trust me.

so then. after threatening the life of a child and when i finally manage to make it through the check out after the ninehundredsomething year old finally manages to scrawl out something resembling a check and has everything double and triple bagged for him, i get to pay a million, trillion dollars for like, one bag of groceries.

hooray! how can you NOT love grocery shopping? i’m going again and again and again, alex!