A Trip To The Supermarket

Entering the newly constructed supermarket, the 37-year-old stay-at-home husband stared at the grocery list, determined to return home and watch the rugby match as soon as possible. As he walked down the vegetable aisle, he hunted with complete focus for green peppers. He had now gone past broccoli, jalapenos, green peppers, and cabbage. They were nowhere to be found. He crossed them off the list. Next up was sesame seed bread, thus he walked down the bakery aisle. They must be there thought the man. After all, bread was supposed to be baked. He spotted a good-looking loaf of bread, but he could not see any seeds on it, and it was quite small, although it did have small, brown seed-like shapes on either side of it. It was titled, ‘Pain au Chocolat.’ From his secondary school studying of basic French, he could decipher that that must have been some bizarre French phrasing for seeded bread. He understood that ‘pain’ meant ‘bread’ and the rest meant seed. He grabbed five of them, placing the steel tongues back into his pocket.

After a rather swift hour or so at the supermarket, he was ready to leave. In the basket, he had the seeded bread, and nothing else. What was he supposed to do if the groceries were not at the grocery store? Nothing, he replied. As he strolled back down the vegetable aisle, he passed the broccoli, jalapenos, green peppers, and cabbage.

He was about to, and almost keen to leave, and was passing through the metal detector, when he heard a loud buzz ringing into his ears like a klaxon. One of the security guards dutifully paced over, towering over him by at least a whole foot or two. Surprisingly charismatically, the guard explained that he needed to search the man for stolen items or weapons. A quick pat-down was executed, and the man waited impatiently to leave.

‘I have a football match to get to!’ He muttered through his gritting teeth.

He was starting to get irritated by the lengthy process of simply going to the supermarket. The guard was about to complete searching his track pants when he stopped at his pocket. He looked up at me with a threatening frown.

‘What’s wrong?’ I questioned.

The giant ripped a pair of tongues out of my pocket and thrusted them in front of my face. Another guard grabbed me by the shoulders and pushed me out of the store, still following.

After ten minutes, according to my G-Shock, a siren came into earshot. A police siren. A ford focus with chequered yellow and blue squares stopped in front of me. A policewoman exited the car, handcuffs in hand. I could not believe it. Finalising the absurd situation, she stated,

‘You’re under arrest sir, for shoplifting that is.’