Tag: lists

More Random Shopping Lists

I found two more grocery lists left in shopping carts in the past week. One was completely drenched because it had been left in a cart out in the rain, but I grabbed it anyway and let it dry out on the floor of my car before trying to read it. THAT, my friends, is how dedicated I am to this ridiculous, stupid hobby.

That list, though, proved to be nothing special:

Toilet Paper
Milk
eggs
Cereal
spag sauce [The handwriting was so bad I thought this said “spay savoy” at first.]
pasta
bread
bilogna [sic]

Meh. Nothing to write home about… or, nothing to write at home and then take to the store about.

The one I’d found earlier that week was a little more interesting:

2 honey mustard
2 Distilled water
2 Lem. Gatorade
Celery
2 Dental floss
2 Green tea

I haven’t figured out why this person needed two of everything… except the celery. Perhaps because celery comes in a bunch of many stalks (usually more than two). As usual, I tried to imagine the sort of project or meal someone was in the middle of concocting before he or she realized they’d run out of these things. In which case, the dental floss threw me off a little bit.

Still, if I had my choice, I’d rather be invited to the first person’s house for dinner. I love spaghetti, and I could even stay overnight and have a breakfast of eggs or cereal. Heck, I’ll even show up early and we can make bologna sandwiches for lunch. (I’ll assume the toilet paper is just a basic necessity in this case.)

But that second list? I can’t think of any beverage or smoothie or meal that would turn out good using those ingredients, no matter what other ingredients are already at your house waiting for you. I’ll pass. Thanks anyway.

Maybe the dental floss is to get the celery strings out from between your teeth.

Oh well. I’m still hoping to find that perfect shopping list: ax, rubber gloves, bleach, large trash bags, Luminol… But until then, my search for the story created from the perfect serial killer* shopping list continues…

—

*as opposed to “cereal killer”

Random Grocery Lists

aluminum black and white business cart
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

I admit I have one weird habit. (Okay, maybe more than one. Let’s not quibble.)

When I’m grocery shopping, I like to find a previous shopper’s grocery list in the shopping cart I’m using. I grab the list and bring it home. I try to imagine what situation at home forced them to make a list with these particular items on it.

Now, before you gripe, yes, I realize there is usually not  a direct line of cause-and-effect between the items on a random grocery list and whatever is going on at home. Heck, my own grocery lists are two columns wide, are ordered by aisle as found in the store, and make up more than a week’s worth of items that are running low.

But those short lists seem to mean something. Like, someone was in the middle of a project and realized they needed a few things to keep going. So, they wisely jotted down what they still needed and made a quick dash to the store… so quick that they left the list in the cart and hurried back to their cars.

In the past month I’ve found two of these little lists. What stories do these lists tell?

LIST 1:

quart milk
Sobee – 6
Corn – Sun.
Smucker’s: Natural creamy PB
     Smooth
Couple of Benefuls

LIST 2:

Soft Scrub
Clorox toilet
Jelly
Milk
Cereal
Baking soda

There’s a simple reason I grab these little lists when I find them. I’m going to continue taking random grocery lists until I get one that looks like it came from a serial killer (“axe, chainsaw, bleach, large plastic tote, latex gloves“). Because writers see stories everywhere. Do you?