Saturday, January 9, 2010


Saturday afternoon at the grocery store is just Amateur Hour.

I had to go grocery shopping this afternoon because otherwise we'd be reduced to eating our boots by Tuesday and there is about a foot and a half of snow on the ground and we need our boots. It's a Wisconsin thing. Plus, I do not have any good recipe for boots. Although I do have a collection of Depression-era recipes somewhere in the basement, and there might be one there. So it is conceivable that I would not have had to go grocery shopping, but it seemed the just and proper thing to do anyway.

So I went.

And everybody and their nitwit twin brother was there, clogging up the aisles and clearly thinking deep philosophical thoughts in the canned beans section. Because all those beans? Sweet dancing monkeys on a stick, how many choices there are. It's just a bean-a-palooza out there, and serious thought has to be given, otherwise you might come home with THE WRONG BEANS and then what? Huh? Huh?

Think about THAT, why don't you.

Is it even possible for beans to be wrong? How would you know? And how would you correct this situation in a morally proper manner, given the epistemological nature of beanhood and the Just Beans Theory.

Yes, I had a lot of time to think about stuff like this while I waited for the logjams to clear. Who needs drugs when there are beans.

When I was in college I lived off campus one summer, and one of my roommates had a car. It was not an ideal grocery-getting car, really - a two-seater Pontiac Fiero with a trunk that could hold maybe a bag and a half of groceries, plus whatever you could rest on your lap - but we made do. And we used to go shopping at 1am on weeknights. It was us, the restockers, and a handful of other grocery warriors.

And the canned bean section? Traffic jam free.

Move along, folks. Nothing to see here. Let the professionals do their work.


Anonymous said...

You said, "Pontiac Fiero with a trunk that could hold maybe a bag and a half of groceries"

You must be talking about the front trunk where the spare tire is. The trunk in the back will hold two full size golf bags.

I've put 7 brown bags full of groceries in mine.

David said...

7 bags! Zounds. Maybe my friend just had too much stuff back there to fit any more.

Unknown said...

Do you have something against twin brothers? ;-)