Cheaper Than Flowers

A holiday situation presented itself whereupon I got the opportunity to spend a $100 gift card at Kroger. As completely unsexy as that initially sounds on the back end, the front end of preparing a variety of meals off of food that I got for free was an awesome enticement. I perused the aisles filling my cart with ingredient after ingredient, spending a fair amount of time in the produce section packing in all the fresh greens and sad-looking winter tomatoes I could. With most everything I chose, I already had a recipe in mind and an idea of how I was going to use it in a meal or in presentation. I am pretty calculated in my grocery store selections. I feel that in doing so, I'm saving the waste of price-driven impulsive buys as well as the caloric intake of iced, individually wrapped things that come in boxes, both giving way to residual back fat buildup. Plus kale costs like, a dollar and cereal is priced in such a way that makes you wonder what the hell is in cereal anyway.

Partly due to the warm, inviting nature of Kroger HR and part due to The Law, a retard bagged my groceries. Over the years of grocery shopping, I have discovered that old people work at Wal-mart, and mentally handicapped people work at Kroger. I don't know at which point they decided this to be, although I wonder who really "won" on that deal. Personally, I feel as though the mentally handicapped people are in better spirits than the old people in the majority of my experience. Anyway, the cashier scanning my groceries in must have been often paired with the particular retarded gentleman that was bagging my groceries, as they seemed to have a sort of annoyance-ignoring thing going on. Their team ethic was reminiscent of a married couple, whereas one of them has clearly just gone insane and the other one laughs or ignores them to keep their own sanity. I am wondering which manager put these two together because the cashier, who looked like a young black-haired Don King, was like the Billy the Kid of grocery scanning whereas the other guy was the slowest person I've seen do anything while working. He stood at the end of the conveyor belt, giggling and making small talk with us while $91 worth of groceries just began to pile up in front of him.

"I like hockey," he grinned as he grabbed two frozen items and put them in the same bag. Before I could respond, he found two more frozen items and added them to the same bag, "Actually, I like the Big Three." He stopped working and said, "You know, the Big Three."
"Yep," I said, looking at the pile of unbagged groceries.
"Baseball.... football," he patted some meat, "Hockey!"
"Yeah I really like hockey, too," I said, and looked at the cashier who was desperately trying to get his bagger to cooperate.
"C'mon, Ed...." he said in a surprisingly polite tone.

Ed was holding up my bananas. "I just bought bananas."
"I'm buying bananas," was my response.
He stopped working again. "You know, I don't really even like bananas. I think I bought them because they...look good on my counter." I dismissively laughed.

Ten minutes later, my groceries were bagged and I was rushing through the rain to get them all packed in my car, the grocery experience still mildly resonating in my mind. However, I had forgotten about it by this morning when I came out to get breakfast and realized I hadn't even touched my bananas. They were one of the few items I had bought that was not part of a meal plan. I honestly didn't even want them. But, much like flowers, they did look really nice on my counter.