A harrowing experience at the grocery store

Today I went to the store, and there I spied an unmannerly child running around licking all the apples. Imagine the odds of finding a child beyond parental control at the grocery store.

ALEX, ALEX, DAMMIT! asked me where the carrots were, so I told him to go stand in the frozen foods cooler and wait for the next delivery. His mother started to chew me out, but then she realized she couldn’t hear him from in there. I nodded cordially and pushed my cart away. I wonder if he’ll ever get out?

This was all nearly as repulsive as the time I saw a mother spooning mints from a restaurant lobby communal bowl directly into her child’s mouth before replacing the spoon in the bowl. There’s a moral in here somewhere. Perhaps it will occur to me after a restorative nap and a fall down the stairs.

8 responses to “A harrowing experience at the grocery store”

  1. ugh. That mint story gave me the creeps. The thing I see a lot of parents do that usually makes me a little uneasy is seat their kids on surfaces where food is placed, like restaurant tables and fast food counters. I’m sure if I ever manage to spawn I’ll be guilty of similar infractions. After all, I’ve been caught using the dish sponge to clean up a spill on the floor. For shame!

  2. I recently had to take a food handling safety course, and the teacher said never to eat unwrapped mints or nuts because of experiences as you have described, and also because they are often revealed to contain traces of urine from when other people don’t wash their hands after going pee pee. Food for thought, so to speak!

  3. A couple of years ago on an airplane, a little girl started vomitolaing everywhere. My initial, atavistic response of “Arrgh! Disgusting! Get away!” was quickly replaced with a newly parental “awwww, the poor little kid!”

  4. max: you’re right, I would have had more sympathy for that terrible grocery urchin if he’d been vomiting.

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