Just A Little Game I Play

While waiting in line at the grocery store, do you ever try to decipher someone else's life by what's in their cart?  I do this all the time, right after I read the headlines about the four-legged babies and Nicole Richie's "bump" on the tabloid front pages.

If you see a middle-aged man and he's got mostly microwave dinners, lots of junk food, no fresh vegetables or fruit, hot dogs, sliced lunch meat and a bag of white bread, he's a bachelor, probably divorced.  If you see a couple bottles of Jim Beam or a 24 can cube of Bud Lite in there, you know why.

If you see a 70s+ elderly couple buying a lot of food and large pieces of meat, like a ham, they have a lot of company on the weekends.  No one over 70 buys milk in gallons unless the grandkids are about to arrive.  They also usually have apples and oranges, thinking these are good treats for the little wonders.  The kids will probably arrive with their backpacks filled with gummy worms and Cheetos because they know Gram will try to feed them fruit.

It's interesting to see how young mothers differ in what they buy.  Some go the fresh vegetable and fruit route, with a couple of bunches of bananas, grapes and melons.  These Moms also don't buy the sweetened cereal, they buy oatmeal.  They buy green veggies, both fresh and frozen, and lots of chicken.  About as close as they get to buying sweets is a little box with a string of animal crackers.  They also usually have at least two cartons of juice in their carts.  I say, "Yay, you go, girl," when I see one of these Moms unloading her bounty onto the conveyor belt.

Then of course, there's the opposite Mom.  Her cart's got those popsicles that are just sugar, coloring, a flavor and water.  The closest she got to the fresh vegetable section was to pick up a 20 pound bag of potatoes and a net bag of onions.  Frozen pizzas, Hot Pockets and the economy size bags of sweetened cereal are overflowing the top.  Usually she's got Hamburger Helper and lots of soda, too.  Sometimes she has one of her kids in the seat of the basket, and it is usually red-cheeked and exhausted looking, trying to grab the gum and mints in the check out aisle.

The saddest carts are the little old ladies.  The smallest carton of cottage cheese, the small box of Grape Nuts, a half gallon of milk, the little Jiffy cake mix that makes just one layer, the small can of decaf coffee, some powdered sugar donuts for breakfast and one or two baking potatoes is their purchase for the week.  Sometimes they count out the exact change to the clerk to the penny.  I am always patient when they do this.  Someday I'll be in their sensible black shoes, buying the smallest carton of cottage cheese and hoping I can use it before it goes bad.