Do You Know Someone Who Needs to Be Microchipped or Outfitted with a GPS Tracking Device?

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

It happened again last weekend.  I lost my husband in Target.  We walked in together and proceeded to the back of the store to the books and magazine section.  I always like to swing back to that department and load my cart with my educational and informative reading for the week.   How else am I going to stay informed about Kim Kardashian’s divorce hell or the 25 stars who ride skateboards if I do not get the latest edition of People or Us Weekly?  At some point, I could find myself in a vicious game of Trivial Pursuit and it could all come down to a Geography question or an Entertainment question.  I may not know where the Swiss Alps are located, but I guarantee you, if the question has anything to do with useless celebrity news I am the girl to have on your team.  Well, tonight I just finished saying to my husband, “Can you believe that Suri Cruise is wearing high heels at her age?” and think I heard him say, “ Who cares?” and I turned around and he had vanished into thin air.

 

My favorite person in the whole world to shop with is my youngest daughter.  We walk into the store together, tell each other when to meet back at the cash register, and we each go on our merry way.  My husband, on the other hand, has two shopping styles.  Either, he is walking so closely to you that you feel like your shadow has come to life or he mumbles something and disappears. 

I know good communication is one of the secrets to a great marriage, so sometimes when he is in his shadow mode, I will say, “what’s it going to take to make you go away?”  Other times, I will point to a TV on in the electronics section and say, “hey, I think I just saw a boob go by in that music video,” in the hopes that he will rush over to see for himself and be distracted long enough for me to make a clean getaway.   I hate to be rude, but he positions himself constantly between me and what I am trying to look at down each aisle and I have remarked, on more than one occasion, that I didn’t know we were supposed to have a total eclipse that day and can he think of any other explanation that a large moon keeps getting directly in my path and all he said was, “maybe the moon is tired of you buying everything under the sun.” 

 

When my kids were little, it was my oldest daughter that plucked my nerves when we shopped.  Usually, we would just enter the store and she would announce that she was hungry or she would wait to let me know that she had to go potty until we were at the furthest point in the store away from the bathroom.  I was not above tossing a box of Animal Crackers in her direction or saying,  “What do you mean, you can’t hold it?  I am not leaving this area until I find a World’s Best Mom t-shirt in my size on this clearance rack.”   Once at TJ Maxx, when I was having what can only be classified as a shopping orgasm because I just scored the deal of a lifetime, I turned around in my euphoric state only to see my daughter had disappeared. 

I guess while I was screaming, “It’s mine, all mine!” she thought it would be fun to hide in the middle of a circular clothing rack and not come out even when her mom was shouting her name and sobbing, “nobody better steal my cart with my goodies while I am looking for my kid!”  After what seemed a lifetime, she popped out from her hiding place only to see that her mother was no longer in her “happy place” and her young life was now in serious peril.

Now, I can’t swear my husband is hiding in the circular clothing racks, but he is as good at disappearing in a store as my daughter was that long ago day.  He disappears so thoroughly that I really believe he has had some kind of SWAT training in a former life and is practicing his zigzagging skills throughout the store or has secretly outfitted me with a motion detector device and is monitoring my location at all times to avoid being found.   Once in awhile, I will catch a glimpse of him and call out his name only to see him duck into another aisle   Later, when I ask him if he heard me calling his name, he always pretends ignorance, but I know in my heart a person doesn’t whirl his head around willy-nilly and yell, “get out of my way, she’s closing in on me,” just on a whim.  

Don’t get me wrong; we have fun shopping together sometimes. Once, I ran into him in the snack aisle and I said, “Hey mister, are you looking for nuts?” and he said back, “My wife has them, “ and just kept walking.  I mean, that kind of hijinks can go a long way in adding some fun to a marriage.  Another time, I saw him covering his face with a magazine and I snuck up on him and waited for him to lower it and said, “boo, I see you!” and his face turned really white and he put the magazine back over his face and said, “how about now?’   When I lost him in Target this last time, things got a little heated up at the checkouts when we finally hooked up and both of us said some things we probably regretted later.  I told him I had been all around the store twice looking for him and I even stopped and asked an employee where the dumbbell aisle was located, but after the worker asked me what kind of dumbbell I was looking for and I said, “the one I married,” he just laughed and didn’t offer any further assistance.  I then went on to say that he is either going to have to wear a bell in the store or let me microchip him with a tracking device and this started another discussion as to where the microchip might need to be inserted.  All he said when I settled on the perfect location was, “go ahead, but I don’t hold out much hope of it lasting there.”

Part of the blame falls on my shoulders, because I am always in a hurry and I almost always forget my cell phone, which could solve a lot of problems.  I am a quick shopper and when I am done, I’m done, and I want to leave. I don’t want to spend an extra thirty minutes searching for someone and I certainly don’t want to stand outside the men’s bathroom and ask some poor guy coming out of it, if there is a guy in there reading the newspaper and would he mind going back in there and telling him to hurry up.  I also have thought about asking the store manager if he has noticed other wives having this same problem and maybe he needs to come up with a lock down system when a husband goes missing.  They could call it Code Where the Hell Did He Go Now? and immediately start making announcements over the PA system, “Attention All Shoppers: We have another lost husband.  He is wearing a green shirt, blue jeans, and probably eating a bag of popcorn. If you see a path of popcorn kernels, please alert management.  Do not approach him. He is a flight risk.”  If the other lost husbands are like my husband, they won’t even hear the announcement, because of a condition known as selective hearing, which often goes hand in hand with male chromosomes.

 

Well, I didn’t want to dwell on this and was determined to put the past behind us, so right up there at the checkout lines, I told my husband someone on DK had a great suggestion recently. They said to hold hands if you start to argue, because it is harder to fight when you are connected.  He was reluctant at first, but I reached for his hands and held them tightly and finally said, “Gosh, I am feeling better now.”  All he said was, “I’m not.  I can’t feel my fingers. Please let go or I am leaving!” 

I just held on tighter, because I was not going to risk losing him again. All I know is Fudge and Vern are not the only ones who need work on their recall.

[Donna K & Quincy]

LOL, Laurie, I can so identify with your shopping trips. I have taken to pointing out the nice benches outside the stores when we are shopping in the malls. I cannot cope with having someone follow me in circles around a clothes rack. It works for both of us, he likes to people watch and I have someone to dump my packages on. My friend's daughter thought it was fun to hide under the clothes racks too and one day fell asleep there. The mall was practically on lock down by the time they found her.

I really try and remember my cell phone when we go shopping together and on more than one occassion have dialed DH's number just to hear the phone ring directly behind me. The last time we went to a store together it was a building supply and we lost each other, I looked for awhile but just gave up and went to the car, I knew he would show up sooner or later. He did a few laps of the store first but that was ok, he needed the exercise.

My son would regularly have me paged at the grocery store, if he went out of sight, he didn't look, just went directly and had me paged. On one shopping trip he had me paged three times (it wasn't a very big store). I was not amused. I did lose him one day at the mall, he was on one of those silly rides and I was reading the posters on the wall, turned around to look and there he was, gone. :>) I found him a few minutes later at the games arcade which was the first place I looked, thankfully I knew my kid.  It is a very panicky feeling though.

This post reminds me of the joke about why you should never take your husband shopping.

Why You Should Never Take Your Husband Shopping.

After I retired, my wife insisted that I accompany her on her trips to Target.

Unfortunately, like most men, I found shopping boring and preferred to get in and get out. Equally unfortunate, my wife is like most women - she loves to browse. Yesterday my dear wife received the following letter from the local Target.

Dear Mrs. Chernack,

Over the past six months, your husband has caused quite a commotion in our store. We cannot tolerate this behavior and have been forced to ban both of you from the store. Our complaints against your husband, Mr. Samuel, are listed below and are documented by our video surveillance cameras.

1. June 15: Took 24 boxes of condoms and randomly put them in other carts when they weren't looking.

2. July 2: Set all the alarm clocks in Housewares to go off at 5-minute intervals.

3. July 7: He made a trail of tomato juice on the floor leading to the women's restroom.

4. July 19: Walked up to an employee and told her in an official voice, 'Code 3 in Housewares. Get on it right away'. This caused the employee to leave her assigned station and receive a reprimand from her Supervisor that in turn resulted with a union grievance, causing management to lose time and costing the company money.

5. August 4: Went to the Service Desk and tried to put a bag of M&Ms on layaway.

6. August 14: Moved a 'CAUTION - WET FLOOR' sign to a carpeted area.

7. August 15: Set up a tent in the camping department and told the children shoppers he'd invite them in if they would bring pillows and blankets from the bedding department to which twenty children obliged.

8. August 23: When a clerk asked if they could help him he began crying and screamed, 'Why can't you people just leave me alone?' EMTs were called.

9. September 4: Looked right into the security camera and used it as a mirror while he picked his nose.

10. September 10: While handling guns in the hunting department, he asked the clerk where the antidepressants were.

11. October 3: Darted around the store suspiciously while loudly humming the 'Mission Impossible' theme.

12. October 6: In the auto department, he practiced his 'Madonna look' by using different sizes of funnels.
13. October 18: Hid in a clothing rack and when people browsed through, yelled 'PICK ME! PICK ME!'

14. October 21: When an announcement came over the loud speaker, he assumed a fetal position and screamed 'OH NO! IT'S THOSE VOICES AGAIN!'

And last, but not least:

15. October 23: Went into a fitting room, shut the door, waited awhile, then yelled very loudly, 'Hey! There's no toilet paper in here.' One of the clerks passed out.

[Jennifer,Chloe & Myla]

Love it! My Dh does the standing in front of the item thing AND trying to be my shadow! I need new shoes because he always steps on my heels and they are wearing out! Love the dumbell aisle!

[Gail and Bailey]

F....LOL....I guess DK and TV does = a life (mine for sure!)   Well...throw in some gardening too. 

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

Leslie, You sound like my oldest daughter. That one almost made me start drinking, too :) LOL No wonder they left you to wander in the mall.

[Leslie and Halas]

What's worse: your kid hiding from you or embarrassing you?  I'm thinking that hiding is worse, so I usually went the embarrassment route.  Sometimes, if my parents were brave enough to walk through the mall with me, I would suddenly start limping, and say, quite loudly, "Ow!  It's my trick knee from when you pushed me down the stairs in my wagon!"  They loved that.

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

Leslie, I was going to blame it all on the parents, but then you summed it up so nicely!! ROTFL  You mean there are other stores you shop at for clothes where you don't have a shopping cart?? LOL

[Leslie and Halas]

You have to love places where you might need a grocery cart to shop for clothes.  One of my great shopping memories is when my family's best friends were with us in the mall.  The 4 parents went to the bar, and told us 2 older kids to keep an eye on the younger one.  We did, for about 5 minutes.  We finally made our way through the mall and back to our parents, and had a conversation like this:

Parents: "Where's Brian?"

Us: "Brian?" As if we'd never heard of such a person.

Parents: "Yes. Brian. The 6 year old you were supposed to keep an eye on."

Us: "Oh, yeah, Brian.  We don't know where he is.  He was supposed to stay with us."

Parents: "Where did you see him last?"

Us: "The toy store."

So off we all went to the toy store.  We found Brian along the way, sitting on a bench, playing with a toy he had walked out of the toy store with.  He didn't seem too worried that he was all by himself in the mall.  Parents had to explain to Brian that it wasn't OK to just take a toy out of a toy store, and then go back and buy the toy.  Parents had to explain to us that it wasn't OK to just expect a 6 year old to follow us. No one explained to the parents whether or not it was OK to set your kids loose on the mall while you knocked back a few.  But with us as kids, they needed it.

[F, Calla & Luca]

Ha, I'll try to ignore it.

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

Kaytlin, Sorry I tricked you! LOL

F, I am going to tell Ricki so she can work hard to catch up. I see an ACV post coming up :)

[F, Calla & Luca]

I am up to at least 2 hokums now. I am in the running, watch out Ricki : )