Shopping With Old People

 Rain. Puts a damper on everything you’ve planned for your out of school grandson to do. He’s twelve now and hiring out. He’s done some yard work – used the electric hedge trimmer for the first time – and yesterday he helped babysit. But today? Rain.

So – he got to ride along with Grandma and Grandpa to do the grocery shopping. Whoop – EEE. Every couple of weeks we head down to Hudson to the Shoprite because, on Wednesdays, they give old geezers a 5% discount and have awesome coupons.

So – in order to make this trip not too horrendously boring for Sam – I asked him to make some observations and take notes along the way. I told him I’d do a blog post recording, and perhaps commenting on, those notes. I handed him the little notebook out of my purse and a pen. Right there in the car I asked him what his first observance was.

“Old people are sassy.”

Oh, yes we are. By the time you’ve lived six or seven decades life doesn’t scare you so much and you get a ‘tude, dude. And everybody nearby gets a dose of it. Guess mine was showing right there in the car.

“There were no young people.”

When you’re twelve, fifteen looks old. This, according to Grandpa.

“It took a while.”

This is the opinion of most men and develops young – like on the first-shopping-trip-at –six –weeks-old young. Let Grandma explain. When you have to run a whole household on a budget, it takes a while to find just the right stuff. Why don’t they get this????

“Nobody moved more than 1 MPH.”

Except the octogenarian in the motorized cart who swung a hard right in condiments and nearly took out a stock boy. Okay, I made that up. But you’re laughing, aren’t you?

That’s what Grandpa and I did when I read that last comment out loud on the way home.

I’ll bet Sam can’t wait to hit Shoprite again. And soon.

Photo: Sam’s notes