Shopping at the Widowhood Village Grocery Store

At the grocery store today an old guy was checking me out so I examined my shoes to see if I was dragging toilet paper from the bathroom where I’d just been. Nope. Maybe my hairdresser was right, I thought. Low lights in my hair really are old geezer magnets. Well, she didn’t exactly say that but she did say they make me look younger. But as quickly as that thought came and went I realized I was wearing a red sweatshirt to show union solidarity against our governor’s Right to Work legislation and so was my ‘admirer’ who, as it turned out, really wasn’t one at all. I smiled. He nodded back. And now we were union buddies who’d just exchanged the “secret handshake.” So much for flirtatiousness in the septuagenarian set. As I walked away, though, I decided it was much better to be admired for my political action participation than for my hairstyle.

Have you ever been shopping and spotted something that you knew would change your life if you could just take that item home? And, no, I’m not still talking about the bench-sitting guy at the front of the grocery store. I’m talking about a product. A new product---well, new to me at least. I’m talking about Weber Beer Can Chicken Seasoning for “grilling enthusiasts.” Oh, my! I don’t know why it was love at first sight. I don’t drink beer and I gave away my outdoor grill a month ago, but having a spice to give a “robust punch” to the chicken I rarely cook---well, like I said, I just knew my life would be perfect if that bottle of spices jumped into my shopping cart. Maybe it was the design of the cap that makes it easy for arthritic or clumsy hands to open that made me fall in love. I like good package designs. Whatever the reason, $1.89 for a few minutes of entertainment in a grocery aisle is pretty cheap.

Shopping is sure different without Don. I’ve had eleven months, now, to get used to shopping in the Widowhood Village grocery store compared to twelve years of shopping in Caregiverville. Anyone who’s done that knows you don’t have time to read labels and fall in love with products with handy little tops while shopping in Caregiverville. Nope. It was hurry up so I didn’t have leave Don too long at the front of the store, sitting in his wheelchair next to the bench were the man in red was perched today---the wife-waiting department. Don would drink Starbucks, people watch and thoroughly enjoy both and I’d have to get my shopping done before he needed a trip to the bathroom which he couldn’t do on his own. Flossie and Fred in the handicapped bathroom stall---if you don’t catch the dark humor in that reference you’ve never read The Bobbsey Twins in a Radio Play or The Bobbsey Twins in the Mystery Cave or any of the other 135 books in one of the longest running children’s series ever written.

Flossie and Fred Bobbsey and the other set of twins in the family, Bert and Nan, will go on forever. Too bad life doesn’t follow the same path as fiction. When Don and I was doing our Bobbsey Twins routine, though, one thing could have been written in stone. Don would have enjoyed seeing the guy on the wife-waiting bench checking me out. He would have thought that man had good taste no matter how gray and old I look. I miss being loved like that. ©