Shoppers, Phone Home

If Steven Spielberg filmed the movie “ET” today, he’d have the alien phone home from a grocery store. His cell phone glued to his ear, he’d ask someone from his planet whether he should bring back the “virgin or the extra virgin olive oil.”

Among the other alien creatures crowding the aisles on Thanksgiving Eve will be my husband. He’ll be bitterly clinging to his cell phone.

At our house, I’m the first-round grocery shopping draft pick. But on holiday eves, I send in my husband to substitute. It’s going to get rough out there in the field, and I’d rather injuries are inflicted on the second string.

I have more experience and discount coupon shopping skills. I think of coupons as “Weapons of Mass Discountation.” Hubby tears them into confetti and refers to them as “Speed Bumps.”

“No way am I slowing down to save forty cents off a jar of artichoke hearts!” he says.

I like to stop and smell the rutabaga. My husband is a speed shopper. He revs up his adrenalin to fuel his shopping efforts. He thinks the end-of-aisle hairpin turns should be banked like a NASCAR race track.

With our home phone number on speed dial, Queen’s “We Are the Champions” downloaded as his ring tone, and his cell phone holstered like a weapon, he strides out. I chase after him with the grocery list he left on the counter.

In a few nanoseconds, he will call home. Other family members place bets on how many times he will phone. The winner gets extra whipped cream on their pumpkin pie. Hubby gets bonus points (no one will mention his cholesterol while he’s downing the second piece of pecan pie) if he gets home with everything on the list.

He’ll ask the mundane questions about can size and brand, but he’ll throw in some others for variety:

“Whole berry or jellied cranberry sauce?”
“What’s the difference between white eggs and brown?”
“You want the Papa Bear, the Mama Bear, or the Baby Bear-sized tomatoes?”
“I know you said to get the fifteen pound turkey, but if I buy a forty pounder, I save ten cents a pound.”

Apparently, he’s going to overload the grocery cart while overloading the cell towers.

Sometimes, my daughter runs interference and fields the call: “Ask your mom if she wants the pitted or the unpitted ripe olives.”

These questions are from a man who routinely makes tough business decisions. Among the things I’m thankful for is that he’s not in the grocery business.

“Do you want the orgasmic radicchio?” he asks. I smile, imagining heads turning on the produce aisle.

“Definitely!” I laugh. “Get two.” The store would likely sell a lot more radicchio if they’d label it “orgasmic” instead of “organic.”

I like to think of the Pilgrims with cell phones for their First Thanksgiving. John Alden would surely have had to call from the community larder:

“Hey, Priscilla, did thee mean thy acorns or thy acorn squash?”
“Squanto, I know Priscilla said she wanted duck for the feast, but she’s changed her mind. You think you could bag some turkeys instead?”

Hubby will eventually return home, the triumphant warrior, smugly laden with the makings of our Thanksgiving feast. Unpacking the groceries, I’ll note a few items not on the list. Interestingly, he never has to call home to ask questions about the beer for the football games.

The next day, our cell phones silenced (unless you’re a brain surgeon on call), our family will give thanks for our many blessings, including our cell phones.

Hope Sunderland is a registered nurse who's retired her enema bucket and bedpan. A freelance writer, she wrote a humor column for Gulf Coast Lifestyles, and has been published in ByLine Magazine, Journal of Nursing Jocularity, Daily Probe, and is a Hall of Fame contributor to TopFive.com, whose lists have been featured in Readers Digest, The New York Times, network news shows and plagiarized by radio disc jockeys across the nation.