Shopping with Grandma

Shopping with Grandma is usually an experience and a half...

We always get parking right out front. We use her "cripple sticker" (aka: her handicapped parking sticker. And before you get all freaky on me, those are her words, not mine). Which means we usually get parking close to the front of the store. But even if there are no handicapped spots available, she has "horseshoes up her butt" when it comes to parking (again...her words, not mine). It doesn't matter where we are, or when... if Grandma is in the car, I get parking right out front the door. Only when Grandma is with me can I get a parking spot steps from the WalMart on a Saturday afternoon. Which is a good thing because...

Grandma can't walk very good. She won't take a walker or a cane to the store with her. That would be too "old lady like". Instead, she uses a shopping buggy. We get to the store, and I run out of the car to retrieve a shopping cart. I bring it back to her, and she uses that as her walker to get around.

She's a little slow. So there is no running into a store, grabbing one thing, and running out again. No. You have to go up and down every aisle. Slowly. It's an exercise in patience, but because I find myself wandering down aisles that I don't usually wander down, I've actually found a few bargains because of it.

Which is surprising, because for someone who moves so slow, she sure can disappear in a hurry! I will be walking through the store, expecting her to be right behind me, and suddenly she's disappeared. I frantically search the store, only to find her 2 aisles down yakking to some cute stock boy. She's worse than a 2 year old.

Grandma knows her prices! You're not allowed to buy that item, because it's 50 cents cheaper at the other store, which is on the way home, so we'll just have to stop there too! A trip out to buy 5 things, can land us at 4 different stores, and take 2 to 3 hours! But, at least we get parking right out front each time!

She doesn't like the self checkout lanes at the grocery store. Even though the process was the same (scan item, put item in bag, pay for items), she really didn't have a clue what was going on.

Now despite my "complaints", I have to admit that I actually really enjoy shopping with Grandma. She grew up in a different era than I did, before electronic "gizmos" (her word, not mine -- actually she said "all those damn gizmos", but I knew what she meant). She has a completely different outlook on things. The more we shop together, the more I learn about her, and what it was like to grow up in the depression.