Tales from the Groceries

I am a nosy person.  If I turn on the TV and start watching something with intrigue, gossip, etc, I nine chances out of ten stick around to see what happens.  The show could be terrible, but I just have to know.   When I was living in Staunton, which is a fairly small town, I constantly got to hear pieces of gossip.  It didn’t matter if I knew the person or not, I always loved hearing it.

Next to being a little too obsessed with food, gossip is my next biggest vice.

Even as a kid, one of the things that I loved to do while waiting in line at the grocery store was to sneak peeks at the groceries of the person before and after me.  Although I guess that isn’t but so bad, I often then made personality guesses based on the groceries.  That is pretty bad.   

What made me think of this was a trip before Christmas to the grocery store with my mom.  While in line, behind us was a woman in her early seventies.  I watched her plop her groceries on the belt.  She started with 7 medium sized frozen pizzas.  Then, she brought out English Muffins, two loaves of cheap white bread, a gallon of Hawaiian punch, three hams, and a few other items.  For a while, I couldn’t figure out what her deal was.  I couldn’t imagine a 70-some mature woman eating Tombstone pizzas, while cooking two hams, and sipping Hawaiian punch.  Then, it finally connected . . . grandmother making sandwiches for grandchildren.   

When I’m in the grocery store, I wonder what people think of me and my groceries.  I tend to stand out in groceries because I’m the one in no hurry, wandering up and down aisles, checking out sales, new products, anything really.  Unless I’m just popping in for a few things, I usually can’t get out of a grocery store in less than an hour.  Now that I live in a town with a Trader Joe’s, I’m the one with eyes like saucers and literally skipping down the aisles.  This weekend, I was also the short, five-foot tall happy looking brunette asking the manager of the fish counter about fish heads they might have lying around.

We foodies are a strange bunch and I’m sure our groceries speak volumes about us.  Are you a brie, a goat cheese, or a block of sharp cheddar?  Are you romaine, arugula, or iceburg?  Do you get your chicken and red meat on the bone for flavor, do you get large cuts so you can cut them up yourself, or do you go for the tidiest one possible?  

If you were standing in line behind me at the grocery store, what would your groceries being saying about you?