"My 15 minute Grocery Run"

"My 15 minute Grocery Run"

by:

Virgilio F. De leon Jr.MD

A few weeks back I went on a grocery run all by myself. Armed with a long list of the things we needed around the house , I found myself going around the Supermarket with a lone shopping cart and was amazingly done in 15 minutes. 15 minutes. I clocked it as I fell in line at the cashier. 15 minutes. Why the hell do I usually feel like we have been in the store for 15 hours when we usually do our groceries? And there came the realization.I was all alone.

My wife wasn't there to OC about the cleanliness of each box of soap she took from the shelf or to ask for a new stock of something or if this was new or when does this expire. Granted all of this is important especially the last one but I once told my wife that she need not ask the expiry date on things we eat since they don't last a week in our household. Heck most of them don't even last the ride from the grocery back to our home.

My daughter Aven would usually act like a little Tasmanian Devil when she was with us , look at the list and zip through the entire store in the bid to get the most items before her mom finishes comparing 3 bottles of shampoo which all look the same to me. 

God bless the heart of my eager to please daughter but her loss from our field of vision usually keeps me worried(Yes even inside the grocery store) and I would call her. She would come back. I would tell her to stay. She would get bored because she felt like she was just standing around doing nothing. And all the while her mom is still reading through the whole shampoo bottle label or deciding on which tuna to get.(My wife has her staples but is really prone to experiment on something new from time to time and so we end up with the exotic looking can of squid something at the pantry with no one touching it for months. Kind of contradicts about food not lasting for a month in our house doesn't it?).

Today there was none of that. Just me in the cashier and ready to pay after the only other person on the line.

Yup this trip was pretty quiet and I was thankful that it only took me 15 minutes to finish. I really missed grocery shopping with my crazy family.