For over a year now I have not grocery shopped. Oh, I have stopped at grocery stores, but only to buy things I needed right then. Grocery shopping, in the once-a-week stock-up-on-things-you-eat-regularly way, is a sport I\’ve tried and failed to learn.

When I moved out, a few things shocked me; laundry (I was spoiled all my life by a clothes-washer-mother), keys (my childhood home was closed to mosquitoes and fruit roll-ups, but not criminals), and of course, neighbors. But having to hunt and kill (metaphorically) my own food each and every week was a task I was unprepared to accept.

Mind you, I\’d had plenty of experience with grocery stores. I was the resident cart-pusher in our family, well versed in four treacherous aisle-defying styles (push, pull, push and glide, and the two-wheeled swerve). But actually choosing (and paying for) food seemed to me like launching a rocket to the moon: just knowing you have to go up really fast doesn\’t make you an astronaut.

And so it was for me with grocery shopping. There I was, living on my own, in the prime of my youth, and I couldn\’t decide which English muffins to buy. There are seventeen kinds.

I knew that I needed food. I even knew that I wanted food. But the supermarket confounded me with its disco-ball-like onslaught of choices. For every kind of food you want, there are dozens of kinds of food of … that food. Um…

Like eggs. I like eggs; they are readily fashioned into various tasty meals. And, like most vegetarian foods, they\’re healthy (in my book, if it\’s not a meat, it\’s a vegetable). But faced with that proliferation of cartons – eggs in so many brands and sizes and prices – I seized up. It was like a harmless, fragile Cold-War arms race for which I was solely responsible.

\”Mr. Stock-Boy,\” I said to the pimply teen kneeling at the base of display, \”Tear down this wall!\”

\”You mean this wall of eggs?\”

\”You heard me!\”

\”OK, you\’re the boss.\”

By the time I heard a loud crash and the gurgles of victims trapped in frigid egg-yolk, I was in the cookie aisle, not knowing which kind of cookies to buy.

As you can see, this wasn\’t going to be a successful strategy for keeping myself fed (not to mention keeping the stock-boys out of trouble). So I decided that rather than trying to choose between the thousands of options available, I\’d find something they only sold one of. That something, I\’m happy to report, was Mr. Dee\’s Hashbrown Patties; $2.50 for a pack of 15. Three minutes in the toaster, and you had a delicious, filling addition to your breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Provided the other part of you breakfast, lunch, or dinner was another Mr. Dee\’s Hashbrown Patty.

For months, this was all I ate, and it made my trips to the supermarket a breeze. In and out in 45 seconds, I used to say (which, considering how greasy the patties were, would have been a good slogan for them, too).

But all good things must end. Eventually I developed a convulsive reaction to the potato patties, which by then had gone up 50 cents in price anyway. Mr. Dee wasn\’t cheap and easy any more, so we parted ways without a word. Plus, I got a little tired of feeling the fat start to coagulate before I was even done chewing.

Since then, I haven\’t been able to get back into grocery shopping on a regular basis. I buy things here and there when I need them (ice cream, pop corn, hot dogs), but mostly I get by eating out, eating at my girlfriend\’s house, or loaning myself food from my mom\’s fridge. It\’s not as grown-up as doing my own groceries, but it saves time, money, and confusion.

And it keeps the Sovieggs happy.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 22nd, 2004 at 7:00 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.