I personally have spent a lot of time marveling at some of the things my parents do and my grandparents did, swearing up and down that I would NEVER be that way. Well, this morning I found myself on a drive all the way across town to the natural food market that I never go to in order to buy one thing. ONE item. I then got back into my car and drove back across town to the grocery store where I purchased my actual groceries. Now I know that seems pretty ridiculous in and of itself, but what is really absurd is that this is one of the very things I have always sworn I would never do. My mother is notorious for needing bread from this store and meat from this store and cheese from over here when I would just rather go to Subway and call it a day.
But here it is, 30 degrees outside and I am running into a store for one thing. Mama comes by it honestly I must say, as her parents were always on an errand of some sort for one specific brand of something that you could only get at this one store. I know Dena has hinted at one particular story about driving to multiple stores for a pepper, but my little excursion made me decide to tell the whole story.
Apparently, our grandmother needed a red pepper for a recipe. Being that she didn’t drive, Dena drove her around town so that she could locate the pepper in question. Now, since Dena was experienced in taking her and our mother on such excursions, she knew that it would be best to wait in the car for two reasons. #1 she would not have to endure actually going all over the store and inevitably losing my grandmother and looking for her for an hour and #2 her being in the car creates that sense of urgency because you never want to leave someone waiting in the car. So there Dena sat, store after store after store, and my grandmother returned empty handed each time. Finally, Dena says to her, “Is every store in East Texas out of red bell peppers?” To which my grandmother replied, “Well they have them but none of them look good.” All that time Dena had thought that every store must surely be out, but no, it was simply a matter of my grandmother finding just the right one for whatever it was she was cooking.
And now all these years later, after all my promises to myself that I would never be that way, here I am eating my words. In case you’re curious as to what started my quest, it was for one specific brand of chocolate milk (Promised Land) that I can only get at one store that is about as inconveniently located as it can be for me. Will I be making the drive again to buy just that one thing? Absolutely!
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