I think one of the funniest scenes (Maybe the only funny scene) in the movie The Weather Man is when he is told to pick up the take-out and, WHATEVER HAPPENS, don’t forget the tartar sauce. The whole time he keeps saying to himself .. ‘tartar sauce, tartar sauce, tartar sauce’, but random things start popping up. In the end, he forgets, it is the last straw and results in their separation.

Now, I do not know about other men, but I have been upstairs helping Narda put the boys to bed and been asked me to run downstairs and get something. On many occasions, I have run downstairs, done several other things .. taken an extra 10 minutes because I walked by the TV or computer and got distracted .. And returned upstairs to that look of ‘where is the item that I asked you to get that does not appear to be in your hands?’ Yup, many times.

So, on the weekend I had to jump out and do a couple things (get to the bank, go get some hot-tub chemicals) and was asked to go into the grocery store and pick up 10 items. The grocery store is a scary place for a married man. Now, I know that for the single man, it is an exciting place. There are many articles on how to meet women, and they all suggest the supermarket late at night. Well, I can assure you, to the married man it is not that green field .. It is a mine field filled with all kinds of things that we put in the shopping cart when we are accompanied by our better half, only to have them quickly pulled out of the cart when we are not looking.

So, I enter the grocery store. My first observation is of all the other men like me. One hand on the cart, the other holding a list, with that look of ‘WHAT F$%^ING AISLE IS TARTAR SAUCE IN?’ Yes, frustrated, concentrating while still looking very lost.

My second observation, my TOTALLY amazing wife has put everything in order! HA! It works from left to right. I smile at the poor bastard beside me. What is that? Your list reads vegetable (1st aisle), condiment (8th aisle), milk (back), another veggie (1st aisle), bread (9th aisle), feminine product (3rd aisle), pie (front) .. She must be mad at you. Sucker.

I then proceed to go after the 10 or 12 items on the list. Now, this is where I get to the part where men really need supervision. Over the next hour (Yup, it was a slow process) I ran into 2 people that I knew, and well, that just threw my rhythm off … One must chat. I laughed and compared lists with my Insurance Broker … men out on a mission (To which he mentions how his daughter got him, asking him to pick her up a bottle of wine from the store as he walked out .. now he is doing his wife and his daughter’s list). I digress. So, up and down I go and … and I end up with a full cart. And I mean FULL. There were so many things that I had forgotten that I really needed for the house … And of course, this is where my wife and I have a difference of opinion. She likes buying only what we need, I am a bulk up kind of guy. I am the ‘you never know when we could get snowed in for a month, better stock up! Lets go to Costco’ kind of guy. Why buy it over 4 visits when you can do it all at once and store it? (Which is why I came home with 4 bottles of Plax, 6 Lysol, and a few other things on the list that I multiplied by a factor of 4 to 6).

I also ended up with 2 fresh lobsters, 2 jumbo milk chocolate bars (in case we want real hot chocolate), 2 boxes of Dutch cookies, 2 types of ice cream, 4 bottles of wine, light bulbs, 5 bags of bulk candy (for my office), and a host of other things .. But I forgot to get a plunger.

And you know what was amazing? Everything I put in the cart, stayed in the cart and arrived safely at the till. Amazing.

In the end, I got every item on the list. But the 10 item, $40 list turned into a full trunk and $350. Maybe I do need supervision.