The Amazing Self-deleting Grocery List

One day, as we were unloading groceries, Honey announced “I have been doing all of the grocery shopping for over thirty years.  The next thirty are your turn.”

That was about sixteen years ago, so my “turn” is a little over halfway done.  With the exception of special occasions like shopping for one of our trips, she has not set foot in a grocery store since she made that announcement.

She does maintain a handwritten grocery list on a five by eight legal pad.  On shopping day, I just tear off the top sheet and take it along to the store. As I pick up the items on the list, I draw a line through them.  This has worked very well, although it has led to me buying a lot of cheap ballpoint pens because I forgot to bring one along.

This week, when I got to the store, I glanced at the list and was surprised to find that everything on the list was already marked out!  The only exceptions were fresh veggies and salad stuff, purchases so automatic that I probably wouldn’t have bothered to write them down in the first place.

I was confused and a little annoyed.  I wondered why I bothered to bring the list at all.  I stuffed it back in my pocket and forgot about it.  When I got home, I threw it in the garbage in the garage before carrying the groceries into the house.

That was Wednesday.

Thursday, Honey asked me if I had bought hair spray and I replied “No.  It was marked out.”

“No it wasn’t.”

“Yes it was,  Everything on the list was marked out.  It was the most useless excuse for a list I ever saw.”

We argued about it for a while and finally just agreed to disagree.

Friday was garbage day, and just to prove I wasn’t crazy, I dug the list out of the trash before I hauled it to the street. 

The lines that I know that I saw at the HEB were gone!

The blue ink of the pre-printed ruling lines on the page was darker than usual – actually bleeding over a bit.  I can only assume that in the store’s fluorescent light those lines appeared to mark out the stuff written on the list.

Any other explanation would seem to suggest that I have a problem.