You Don't Want to Shop in My Store

A hundred years ago, My Beloved and I used to take turns bringing the garbage out to the curb.  Because he's such a gentleman, to be nice, he often put it out for me.  More often, however, he put it out because I had forgotten and "Trash comes on Wednesday" was like a felt-tip marker on wax paper to my memory: it just wouldn't write.  Finally fed up, we brokered a new deal:  I would do all the grocery shopping, he would do all the trash duty.  And, lo, happiness reigned in the land of Joie de Vivre.

Until...

Until something happened to my brain and I stopped thinking like 93.2% of the rest of people who shop at grocery stores.  The logic used to layout the store and its bounty defies my reasoning abilities.  I try, I really do.  I shop with a list.  I'm even so OCD that I organize my list according to products found together (all dairy in one column, produce in another, etc.)  And yet, still I come home every Tuesday night cursing.  Am I crazy that I think Koolaid should be in the aisle labeled "POWDERED DRINK MIX" and not the aisle labeled "SODA"?  Where are the other 6.8% of the population who, like me, search for adobo chiles in the "MEXICAN" aisle and not among the "CANNED VEGETABLES"?  I miss items on the list that I just wrote down 30 mins before.  I walk right by the dried cranberries, all the while muttering to myself "cranberries, cranberries, cranberries" while scanning the shelves.  It's so frustrating.  I want to put down my basket and pitch a tantrum like a 3yo: "I can't find honey!  This is such a stoopid store!  Whaaa!  I hate it here!  I want my chocolate NOW!"

Can you imagine if I had my own store to layout?  Seriously, this is becoming one of my favorite fantasies.  In my store, organics would be shuffled in with the regulars.  Organic breads do not need their own aisle, people.  Bread is bread.  Raw materials would be organized together: spices, sugar, teas.  All the processed, fake food (things your grandmother wouldn't recognize) would be in a separate aisle all together and I would never go there.  Better yet, since I shop from a list but, apparently, can't seem to navigate a list and walk at the same time, in my store you could place your order online and then go to the store to pick it up.  (Wait...do they already have that?)  As My Beloved says, "I have issues."

Good grief.  You know who I am?  I'm one of those moronic turds-on-the-street seen on "Jay Leno Show".