Social deadbeats

Ah, weekend evenings. The time when we all look forward to relaxing, going out on the town, having fun...and going to the grocery store.

At least, that's what you do on weekend nights if you are us.

Call us a wild couple, but that is what we have found ourselves doing lately. Saturday mornings, which used to be our -- "our" meaning "my" -- usual time for doing the shopping, slowly started getting busy, and before we knew it there we were at Superfresh on Saturday nights, along with all the other social, um, misfits. I am embarrassed to be seen at such a place on an evening when everyone else is out making revelry, and at first I would slink in lest anyone I knew, who might be nearby going to see "Indiana Jones," would see me. The most exciting thing we can do at the store is pretend we're Indiana Jones, searcing for hidden treasure in the form of Lucky Charms.

But don't think that the grocery store on Friday or Saturday night is dead. That's what WE thought, and it was some comfort to feel that, even if we were now among the ranks of those whose most exciting evening activity was deciding whether to get the oven roasted or the mesquite turkey lunchmeat, at least we could do our deliberating in peace. Nothing could be further from the truth.

First of all, the grocery store is overrun with excess children on these evenings -- children, perhaps, whose babysitter canceled at the last minute and whose parents decided that the store could double as a playground for the kids while they get their weekly shopping done. There is no supervision at this playground. Parents are heedless of the destruction caused by their little pirates and bandits swooping through the aisles, catsup and toilet paper and maraschino cherries all being knocked to the ground. At one of the stores we frequent, someone with a malevolent sense of humor has stashed cages of beach balls right near the self-checkout lanes. Need I say more?

And then you have various groups of young people, looking for something to take to whatever gathering they are going to, and wondering, aloud, if brownies can be baked in a frying pan, because that is all the cookware they have at home.

And then there is the two of us. I can't even say that this is a social outing, because we often split up due to Joe's firm belief that what one of us can do, both of us don't need to do at the same time. Besides, his visits to the grocery store are infrequent enough that everything is quite new to him. While I proceed through the store collecting the items on our list and dutifully crossing them off, he is inspecting all the different forms of garlic one can buy, or examining the nutritional content of the 387 varieties of breakfast cereal.

But who knows? Maybe one of these nights, when no one is looking, one of us will jump in the cart and the other will careen through the aisles with it. And now that I think about it, maybe those beach balls at the checkout lanes aren't such a bad idea after all....