I’d prefer the wobbly cart any day.

Another trip into the way back machine to a 2004 column.  Why?  Because it happened to me again today. Got home, putting some groceries away and that’s when I noticed…well, this just seemed appropriate. 

Recently I was out scouting the grocery aisles for a few items. Usually my beloved takes this as an opportunity to hone the girls’ mathematical skills by laying odds on how many more items I will return with over what I set out to purchase. Ice cream doesn’t count.

He then stacks the deck by sending our oldest along with me. She is dabbling her toes in the waters of adolescence like a Labrador retriever bolting after a duck and, also like a Labrador, has been transformed into a mobile digestive system with remote food sensing abilities the envy of locusts everywhere.

This time Diddums was away and I had both girls with me. As it was the last “lunch stuff” shop before summer, they were running around grabbing everything in sight that looked  remotely good to eat. Entertaining as their reaction was, by the sixth time of explaining exactly what cod milt is (“eeeeuuugh, that is so gross”) and why its different from the neighboring cans of Norwegian fish balls, it all got very tiring.  Trying to remember if mesquite-smoked maple-fajita chicken is acceptable in sandwiches to both or only the roast beef with garlic to one and rosemary ham to the other is enough of a challenge most days without Frick and Frack fighting in the background over who gets to look at a can of beluga caviar (‘ooooh that is like totally gross.’).

By the time we’d made it through the produce and snuck past the cereal aisle I could feel the confidence rising. I just might make it out of there with most of what I went in to get. Just a quick swing by the dairy case and head for the tills before they spotted the Hagen Daz… At the check out I noticed one of the milk cartons had some drippage but assumed it was from other cartons on the shelf. Besides there was a major dust-up forming over a pack of Trident and I had to break it up before someone lost an ear.

By the time I managed to get my puppies inside the house, both were complaining bitterly at having to help carry the grocery bags, each convinced the other had less in hers. The bags were taken under further protest all the way from the front door into the kitchen. I expect social services shall contact me soon regarding this egregious instance of child labour.  Then they resumed practicing for summer vacation by an all out knock down, drag out fight over who had the video game controller last.

It was in my kitchen retreat that I noticed the bag containing the milk was sort of sloshing now. I pulled out the milk, determined which carton was leaking and why: it had been opened in the store, closed and returned to the shelf. You know that expression ‘crying over spilt milk’? Well I certainly did not do that. There are a few other expressions I did use, however, but none that can be printed here.

I know that if I’d gone to the local Mr. Grocer there would have been no trouble getting a new carton but I’d stopped in at the store that is but a building block in the empire of a man who started out selling used cars and worked his way up to owning the most of our premiers.  Besides, it had been a long day, I was hungry and it was time to make supper, not climb back into the car to drive back just because some ignorant boob wanted to test drive a carton of milk.

I cling to the out-dated notion that such actions are the result of stunning stupidity rather than a deliberate act of maliciousness by some turkey poisoning nutbar—that happens at Christmas.

Realistically, however, these are strange times we live in: I poured the milk down the sink.  

I have something to say to all those folk out there who open jars for a sniff and a taste; who don’t think it’s stealing to test drive anything on the grocer’s shelf’s.

“You’re welcome”.  

After all, I paid for it, not Jimmie P.,  Mr. Grocer, Mr. Safeway or whoever currently owns Mr. Thriftys.

I hope you enjoyed that drink of milk, scoop of jam, dab of hair putty or Choco Chippie cookies from the jug, jar or bag I have at one time or another brought home not noticing you’d already cracked it open for a quick poke or nosh in the store.

And I hope I’m in a good mood if ever we should meet.