Tales the Grocery Cart Tells

Is it just me or do you ever concoct stories or make judgments about fellow shoppers based on what you see in their grocery carts? I think if I was a grocery store checkout clerk, I'd be creating mental stories about people all day long.

On Valentine's Day, I went to do my regular shopping. (My regular grocery shopping as opposed to my regular Valentine's Day shopping, because there is no such thing as the latter on my agenda.) Our store had prepackaged bouquets out for easy access for last-minute purchasers. I was smiling as I saw more than one gentleman pushing a cart containing a bouquet. And my mind went to work on backstories for a few of them.

One man was purchasing hamburger helper and he had balloons as well as a bouquet, so I was sure that he must be a single dad who had the kids for the weekend. Another gentleman had a bouquet and two cans of soup in his cart. At first I thought he'd volunteered to take care of dinner and I thought, "Come on, you can do better than that." Then I thought perhaps his wife had the flu and he was taking home just what she needed. It doesn't take much for me to entertain myself.

I usually don't think about people paying any attention to what I'm purchasing, although when it snows and everyone rushes out to buy milk, bread and toilet paper and we really are out of milk, I want to shout, "I really need milk! I'm not scared of being stuck at home without milk!" lest anyone think I'm joining the pre-snow frenzy. And there have been times when I'm sure the checkout clerk has thought I've had PMS by the chips and chocolate in the cart.

This past Sunday, I had a reminder that people are probably creating stories about me just as often as I am about them. After a church lunch, I asked someone if he would like to take the leftover soda home. "Don't you drink soda?" he asked. "Not much," I said. "Oh, well, that time we ran into you in the store, you had all that soda in your cart and I was surprised. You don't seem like people who would drink all that soda." I explained that it was my bimonthly stock-up and I had to buy four 12-packs to get the sale price.

And thus Harriet the Wannabe Spy realized that she is not the sole author of Tales the Grocery Cart Tells and how often she is likely wrong with the assumptions she makes. But it's still fun to do. It makes me want to go to the store just for fun (did I just say that?) and pack the cart with a bizarre array of items, just to get  people's storytelling cells working overtime.

The next time you go to the store, remember, somebody's watching you ...