Adventures in Shopping

Getting groceries is always an ordeal for the Hedgehog and I. It begins with a series of very important questions:

Do we have the money?
Do we need something else more?
Can we make it a couple more days?
When do we both have the same day off?
What's the weather like outside?
Do we have the time?

And it's all because we don't have a car. Not that it would matter much since I never learned to drive. When your dad installs carpet for a living and his hours range anywhere from 6am to 2am, and your school has a driver's ed program that kicks you out of it if you miss a single day, there is simply no compromise.

Wal-mart is an hour's walk away from the apartment, and thanks to the Hedgehog's hours, he being practically the only one who closes the store, Wal-mart is our only real option... which limits our options on groceries.

We can't get anything breakable,  or crushable, or smashable. We can't get anything too heavy. We can't get anything frozen, or that needs to be kept refrigerated. We're limited only to what we can carry. Sure, there for a while we had the time in the day to go to a closer place, back before the Hedgehog learned to close the store, and there's always this one convenience store to get milk, eggs, and bread at; but who knows when either of us will have the time and money to go there?

And sometimes we put it off for so long that we need a lot of groceries, and of course we can't carry them all back... which is what prompted us one night to steal a buggy.

The idea was brewing in our minds when we entered Wal-mart that evening, as we loaded up the buggy with the things we needed. Almost all of it was frozen. That was how we both knew that the other knew we were walking away with that buggy. Piled on top of itself, the frozen food would keep itself cold, and it was near freezing outside, anyway.

The more food we got, the more determined I got. There was no way we were going to be able to carry it all, even though I'd brought a huge bag to carry it back in on our backs. When the cashier rang us up, I bit my lip and steeled my resolve. I was going to be walking home with a buggy full of food at 2am, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

When we walked out, I couldn't help but inform the Hedgehog, "I'm leaving with the buggy."

Out of my peripheral, I felt him look at me. "Ok." was his reply, but I kept talking, "I'm leaving with this buggy, I'm walking away." He motioned to a car on the far end of the parking  lot, in the darkness, a car that always sat there. "Just walk to the car." I nodded quickly, "Right, because they won't know that's not our car."

And when we finally left the parking lot, it seemed to hit the Hedgehog what we had done, and he was a small child. "Can I ride on the back of it!?"

And he did.