On Grocery Shopping

What an adventure!  At least the closest aspect of adventure than can venture into a student's daily routine!  Going grocery shopping with your family...  Now here's a story to tell!  Last night, I was trying to avoid doing as much work as possible when my mother stumbled into the back yard, where I was happily lounging while reading an assignment.  "I am going grocery shopping," she announced.  Naturally, since I generally detest my mother and avoid any such communication with her, I replied, "Good, get me what I wrote on my list." I must be fair in saying that since I was a little darling girl, I have not set foot in a supermarket with my mother by my side.  She loathes it as much as she loathes me, only because of the fact that I seem to grab and bring to the cart that which I find most appealing to my taste (generally, everything).  Since she started avoiding me, my mother has gone grocery shopping alone and completely ignored any list of any sort that I ever made.  "I can never find anything you write down!" she yammered.  "If you want something, come with me." 

I was flabbergast!  Did she truly say that?  Did she mean it?  Well, I did not even stop to think!  I got dressed and flew down the stairs and was in the car before she even knew it!  (With my list prepared, might I add.  Oh, and I was also very much prepared to add things to it, if I fancied.)  When we were both securely inside her Champagne Kia Sorento, my mother drove us first to Ponte Fresco, where we proceeded to stuff our faces with salads, and from there continued towards our favorite Guaynabo supermarket.  The way there was bumpy and dangerous, mostly because my mother does not acknowledge that she has no idea how to drive.  When she should be going at thirty-five miles an hour, the meter is marking sixty!  But when, on the freeway, she can go at sixty, she drives at her happy pace of twenty miles an hour.  Utterly exasperating!

However, we arrived about fifteen minutes from Garden Hills.  Of course, my mother believes her Kia Sorento to be a Lexus, so she double-parks in the farthest possible parking space available.  She does not mind if we get mugged or that my feet fall off of my legs from all the walking we do...as long as no one touches her precious Kia, everything will be alright!  So when we finished walking from the farthest parking space available, there being hundreds closer, we take an unused cart, and fling towards the entrance.  What cold!  The fruit section is absolutely devastating because it is always freezing!  And if you have my luck, you wear shorts when it is cold and long pants when it is devastatingly hot!  Oh the irony of my pants!

Funny thing about the fruit section...It always has the fruits that you do not want...ginger, in February...really?  Mushrooms...they aren't even fruits nor vegetables!  Why are they here?  Of course, being Puerto Rico, this supermarket never has blueberries, strawberries nor raspberries.  In fact, if you came precisely to pick up any berry at all, you will be severely disappointed.  Luckily for me, my favorite fruit is always stocked!  Washington Gala Apples are the highest and most amazing fruit there is!  And whilst I am striving to pick the most perfect grapes available, I notice...I am all alone!  My mother, being the exasperated person that she is, left me trotting alone in the fruit section and proceeded by herself to the meats!  Repulsive woman! 

I trail after her throughout the whole supermarket, aisle by aisle every time she leaves me alone to proceed to her own shopping.  Even when I was a kid, I had nightmares of being left alone in K-Mart because she got sick of waiting and suddenly left.  Luckily, this time I managed to find her every time she tried to leave.  However, the one spot where I am the one waiting while she scurries along is in the candle aisle.  My mother has an interesting obsession with glade scented candles.  Our pantry is stuffed to the rim with candles and smelling stuff!  I swear, when she's old and senile, I am going to pull an Agatha Christie scented salts  on her!  That way, humanity will be at peace once more...

Finally, we proceed towards the checkout.  Of course, only three checkout stations are available, one being the ten items or less which we could not possibly have passed, giving that my list alone had about    fifteen items...doubled.  So, we wait.  And wait.  My mother looks at me and I at her...we have nothing to say.  I comment on how many things we have, she states that it must be a two-hundred dollar grocery expenditure.  I laugh and she states that she will never go with me again to the supermarket.  My answer, "That's why I took two of everything!"

We check-out, ride our fifty-pound cart up towards the farthest parking, unload.  It was a good experience which I will never repeat, unfortunately.  My mother will surely kill me next time!  And I will surely cry in pain of her rejection. 

To my mother, I love you even if you suck.