I know you’re all deeply concerned about my wellbeing right now and wondering where on earth I’ve been. Okay, okay, that may actually not be the case, but I’m still going to go out on a limb here and acknowledge my absence in the wild hope that one day a hundred years from now, a brilliant and somewhat mousy historian will happen across my ‘digital diary,’ become obsessed with my writing, and turn my story into a bestselling novel, documentary series, Oscar-winning film, and video game, and I’ll be like the Tolkien of the 2100s. So, brilliant and somewhat mousy historian, this explanation is for you:  Three weeks ago, I spent several days getting my daughter registered for college and all that it entails. (I know. I can’t believe it, either.) Two weeks ago, we went to California for Spring Break. And this past week, an ear infection knocked me on my ass.

Today, I’m finally feeling mostly better, but it was touch and go there for a while. The ear infection made me feel exhausted and dizzy and out of it, and I think it was at least partly responsible for what happened to me a few days ago, an event that will go down in my own personal history as The Third Most Embarrassing Thing That’s Ever Happened to Me at Kroger.*

Here’s how it all went down.

 

It began as an ordinary grocery trip. I had a short list and I was making my way through it as usual. I bagged up avocados and shallots, bemoaned the inexplicable absence of organic lemons, considered and rejected regular lemons, and mulled over whether to buy a loaf of four cheese french bread or roasted garlic french bread for dinner. The grocery was mostly empty and I was pretty much on auto pilot, making decisions in that unevolved, reptilian part of my mind while the rest of my brain pondered questions like ‘Why are the Russians using unencrypted radio communications in Ukraine?’ and ‘Do we even exist or is this all a trick of my consciousness?’. I picked up some Pecorino Romano and a half-pound of roast beef in the deli and pushed my cart on to the meat section, waving and smiling at a group of employees holding a department meeting as I passed by them.

In the meat department, I grabbed two pounds of ground beef and turned to put them in my cart… only to find that the cart beside me was filled – filled to overflowing – with around 75 packages of Kings Hawaiian bread. For about five seconds, I stood there, mouth agape, frozen in place. It took me a moment to even piece together what must have happened.

 

Reader, for the last five minutes, I had been pushing around a cart that some bakery employee had clearly been using to restock bread. I know this because my roast beef, Pecorino Romano, and french bread were all resting on top of the pile. I was so out of it, I had just been pushing this breadmobile around for at least the last five minutes, even passing by a group of employees and waving at them.

Abruptly, I closed my mouth, grabbed my roast beef, Pecorino Romano, and french bread and speedwalked away, darting up the international foods aisle in order to avoid passing by the employee meeting again. I circled back to the produce section, where it took me longer than it should have to find my actual cart, which had been abandoned near the hamburger buns some time earlier.

I’d like to say I then returned the bread cart to the bakery, but unfortunately, that embarrassment was more than I could handle. For all I know it’s still marooned in the meat department while a bakery employee scratches his head over how a cart containing 75 packages of King’s Hawaiian bread could mysteriously disappear into thin air.

I have caused mayhem in the Kroger. Again. And for that, I am deeply sorry.

There’s a moral to this story somewhere, but I’m damned if i can come up with it. ‘Don’t go grocery shopping with an ear infection?’ ‘If you see a cart filled with 75 identical packages of bread, it’s almost definitely not your cart?’ ‘Man’s existence is probably a real thing, because if it were all in your imagination, this situation definitely would never have happened?’

Take from my experience what you will and just be glad it (probably) has never happened to you.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

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*For the curious, here are the 2 even more embarrassing things that have happened to me at Kroger:

 1. Once, I realized I was being followed by a couple as I wheeled my cart through the store. I wheeled faster and shot them many dirty looks trying to get them off my tail. Still, they pursued me. Several aisles later, the couple finally caught up with me… and asked for their cart back. Yep. I had their cart. My cart was over beside the avocados.

2. While trying to maneuver my cart around a bulk candy display, I banged it into a bin full of gigantic chocolate malt balls. The bin went crashing to the ground and malt balls — at least a thousand of them — went noisily rolling in every possible direction. Literally every person in the store stopped what they were doing to stare. It was epic and I was barred from the store for three weeks. Self-barred, but still. Embarrassing!