I admit, it’s been a while since I’ve been through the regular check out line at the regular grocery store. I tend to use the self check-out counter and get pretty tunnel visioned about just getting the hell out of there, or I shop at Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s.

Yesterday I was feeling leisurely (with Christmas around the very next corner, I admit this is probably naive and foolhardy) and economical (a dollar goes a wee bit further at Stop N Shop versus Whole Foods) and decided to stand in a regular line complete with a real live cashier. You only live once right? As I was unloading my groceries, I glanced over to where I remember the candy shelves and soda cooler being when my kids were still of an age that they sat in the cart and had “close candy proximity” induced seizures as I frantically unloaded groceries in a race against full onset preschooler meltdown.

This is what I saw:

What is this crap?  Where are the chocolate candy bars to melt in a child’s sweet chubby fists to be smeared all over clothing and car seats?  Where is the soda that will turn a well-mannered child into a tazmanian devil on steroids?  Where is the potential for your child’s gentle voice to turn into a spine shredding whine?  I want to know who is responsible for this. Parenting is just not parenting without the experience of candy shelves at the grocery checkout. So if you see a small woman giving you a scornful look next time you’re in the grocery store with your sweet, healthy-snack-eating-toddler, that would be me.  And you call yourselves parents.  Ha!

With love,