Insights from the produce section

Today I found myself shopping for a few groceries around midday. It's not so bad a time to grocery shop, the store wasn't busy, parking was great, and it has nice cold air conditioning for the hottest part of the day. So here I am pushing my cart, kiddo damn near asleep in the big part of the cart surrounded by shredded cheese and salsa verde, and I decide to get some bananas. Kiddo likes bananas at breakfast, so do I, and at $0.49 per pound you can't beat the price. So here I am looking for a bunch that aren't too green and don't look so much like victims of domestic violence, and I find myself humming along with the music. In a grocery store. Out loud. Once I realized what I was doing in an almost epiphany-like state I said to myself, "I'm humming along to Duran fucking Duran while I pick out bananas. What the fuck happened to my life?!"

Then I got home and made myself the nutritious lunch of unbuttered microwave popcorn and a handful of M&Ms and realized how funny the whole situation was. There must be someone at Fry's with a sense of humor. I remember seeing a shelf tag for something or other, one of the ones that says "additional product located ____" for the stock overflow of something popular that happens to be on sale. This one I saw directed us to the "Dairy Bunker" for more cookies. Not Dairy Case, or Dairy Dept., or even Milk Dept. Dairy Bunker. This made me think of that mysterious back room being sandbagged and  Fry's employees in helmets and coordinating polos shaking down a spy from a competing store. "Tell us another one, ya traitor! We know you're lactose intolerant! WHO DO YOU WORK FOR?!"

Then there was the joker who put a "WIC approved" sticker underneath the V8 fruit and veggie juice. I wish WIC let you get that shit, man. To a mom with a kid at the "vegetables are disgusting" age, that stuff is a godsend. All the nutrition, none of the taste. That part isn't really funny but it does make me wonder why the feds don't let you use WIC for that. They let you get fruit, veggies, fruit juice, veggie juice, but not fruit and veggie juice. The juices they do allow do not blend well, either. Welch's white grape with Original V8? Yeah. Don't think so.

The last thing that made me smirk was the Duran Duran at the bananas part. Yeah it's uber lame to be caught humming along to grocery store music, but when you consider that a grocery store was playing "Hungry Like the Wolf" at lunchtime, it is kinda funny.

Okay, I'm blogging about the rationalization process I used to turn an ordinary grocery trip to a playground of irony. WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED TO MY LIFE?!?!?