Gunga Din

At 3PM, I began pacing. I pace when Himself is late getting home. He had taken the Weebles shopping, and I had expected him home by 2PM. I paced to the refrigerator, and began rummaging through for some stress food. Grapes. Nope. Baby carrots, nope. I closed the fridge door.

The front door opened and I heard Himself close it with a deep sigh.

“Everything ok?” I asked.

Himself shuffled into the kitchen. “You owe me big time. I’m going to bed.”

“You went to Wendy’s today and used up all your points,” I called after him.

“You take Excedrin before you go visit the Weebles. I take Wendy’s.” He closed the bedroom door.

After his nap, I begged him to tell me what happened.

I opened the Weebles front door and yelled “hello”.

Dad’s voice floated from his upstairs refuge. “Hello?”

Ma responded, “Hello”

“Himself is here,” shouted Dad coming down the stairs.

“Hello?” she called.

Dad went to Ma’s room. “Himself is here.”

“He’s here? Why didn’t he say ‘Hello’?”

“Then they ran around like chickens without heads looking for the pockabook, the walker…which by the way, why does she have three in the house and doesn’t use any of them?”

“It’s a sympathy prop,” I said shoving a bag of microwave popcorn into the nuker. “What happened then?”

“Then she was yelling at him to get the bag and the list, but she had her handbag…”

“The bag is the bag filled with cans for the soda return.”

Himself nodded. “And the list. Why do they bother taking a list? Neither one of them looks at it.”

I brought my bag of popcorn into the sunroom and settled into my comfy chair. Himself trailed after me, and sat in his recliner.

“It’s like a little security blanket. It’s just something to hold onto. Then what happened?”

“I got them herded into the car, and we’re heading down the road. Your mother starts telling me I should have taken the secret road to avoid all the downtown traffic.”

“You don’t head out to 135 by North Main, by the Army Labs?”

“No, I go all the way down Walnut St., take a left by the Outdoor Store, and….”

“She didn’t yell you were going the wrong way?”

“No, but she wanted to!”

I laughed so hard and choked on the popcorn. I waved my hand to indicate I was quite fine and for him to continue.

“Got to Market Basket.”

“Did you have trouble getting a handicap space?”

“No, there was one right by the door. I offloaded them and parked. When I get into the store to help your mother she’s no where in sight. I can’t see her because she’s so far below eye level.”

“That’s why you need to watch the other shoppers to see who suddenly dances a tarantella.” I rummaged through a stack of papers for a notepad and pencil. “Hello, hello, bags and list, wrong way….”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m taking notes so I can blog.

Himself looked to the ceiling and implored the heavens.

“Stop that! Just get on with your story. Did you find Ma?”

“Yeah, she was in produce.”

“Did any tomatoes commit suicide?”

“No, she did pretty good, until we got to the frozen vegetables. Someone rearranged the department so she couldn’t find what she was looking for. I’m running up and down the aisle and bringing things to toss into the cart. I go to toss in a package of peas and carrots and she’s gone!”

“Where did she go?”

“I’m looking around for her and find her in the ice cream aisle.”

“Oh, she usually gets in trouble over there. She always manages to jam the scooter under the freezer toe kick. Did she get stuck?”

“No, that happened later. Oh, forgot to tell you about the meat. We’re blessing all the meat and she’s looking for a particular cut. I grabbed one of the meat guys. She wanted a ‘filet mignon from the shoulder’. The meat guy looks at me, to translate, and I shrug. He went into the meat department and came out with some packages.”

“What did she want?”

“Tenderloin.”

“Is that when she got stuck?”

“No, I’m getting there. By this time, she sent me to look for your father because she wants some Phillipo Berrio [imported olive oil] I finally found him over by the fish market. There must be a men’s room behind there. Boy, did it stink!”

“The men’s room?”

“No, the fish market. I wouldn’t buy fish there if you paid me!”

“So, what happened about the Phillipo Berrio and her getting stuck?”

“They were in the oil aisle, and he grabs a gallon of the Phillip Berrio. She asked him the price and then yelled at him that it was too expensive. As if it was all his fault! She started going down the aisle and she tried to maneuver to let a couple of other shoppers pass. She was trying to be nice, but she ended up making this 12 point turn and ended up horizontally between the aisle shelves.”

“What did you do?”

“I picked her up, scooter and all and turned her the right way.”

I laughed with a hint of schadenfreude, shameful joy, better him than me. “Was that the end of the adventure?”

“No, there’s more. We’re just about to make the turn from 9 to 27 when she said she had to go to the Citizen’s Bank. So I headed over to the Stop and Shop [Citizen’s Bank has a branch inside]. She said, “Not this one! The one downtown!”

“You didn’t take her, did you?”

“I did.”

“I refuse to take them to the bank downtown. There’s no parking and I can’t see to back out onto Main St. So why the hell did she have to go downtown.”

“Because she wanted to yell at someone behind a desk. She had one of her ‘winning’ checks….”

“Say no more,” I said shaking my head. “Did you stay to watch?”

“No, I couldn’t. It was a thousand degrees outside, and the ice cream and frozen veggies were already melting. They sent me to the house to put that stuff in the freezer.”

“And you went back downtown to pick them up?”

“Well, yeah, I couldn’t leave them standing on the sidewalk.”

“You’re a better man than I, Gunga Din.”