Grocery Store Shrieker

This blog was submitted by my sister who also has random funny things happen to her. I guess it runs in the family...

Last Saturday I took my 15 month old daughter to the grocery store for a little weekend outing. I was prepared with toys stashed in my purse, having attempted this feat empty-handed in the past. Our trip started off without a hitch. We cruised through fruits and veggies, and she was content looking at all of the bright colors and listening to me hem and haw out loud about whether to buy bananas or pears. The deli lady baby-talked to her and she pointed, gawked and said “Dis” at the weird looking guy waiting to pick out some turkey or ham. “Dis” is the beginning of the emphatic question what’s this?” that becomes so popular during the toddler years. My daughter has recently decided that she loves the sound of her own voice. As we rounded the corner of the bread aisle, she decided to try out the vocal chords in a loud screaming pitch. I snickered to myself and said out loud to her, more for the other adults in the area who thought that I was a crazy mom just letting my kid yell in the store, “Honey, we can’t scream in the grocery store”. Even considering the screaming, I felt like the grocery experience was going well. She reached for the list, and I relented, explaining to her that “Mommy will need to take that back to make sure we’re buying everything we need”. We did this switch off a few times without incident in the next couple of aisles, and I let her keep holding the list. We turned into the international food aisle and I approached the enchilada sauce. Fierce bargain shopper that I am, I needed to compare a couple of brands and the unit price, all the while thinking back to how much I really needed for my recipe. After a few minutes, I picked the sauce I wanted and turned to put it in my cart. As I turned, I realized that my cute very well behaved baby was now chowing down on my grocery list. I don’t mean just ripping it into pieces. I mean she had actually taken numerous bites out of the list paper and was chewing it up. I shrieked and started digging the paper out of her mouth. She looked stunned, and I was stunned. What the hell!?? I had given her a snack before we left, and it’s not like she has a penchant for eating paper. Unsure what to do, I put the chewed up wads of paper in my pocket… ew! I tried to see what had been written on the bottom of the list, but since a quarter of it was gone, it was useless! Thank God I realized what she was doing before some other person had to politely let me know that my daughter was voraciously eating paper! Good Lord! We headed off for a quick finish to the shopping trip. The shrieking resumed, but I almost welcomed it this time. I mean, I think you’ll agree it was the lesser of the two evils.