{"id":5602,"date":"2013-08-20T13:26:03","date_gmt":"2013-08-20T17:26:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allandouglas.com\/blog\/?p=5602"},"modified":"2025-04-21T01:56:40","modified_gmt":"2025-04-21T05:56:40","slug":"the-scavenger-hunt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/the-scavenger-hunt\/","title":{"rendered":"The Scavenger Hunt"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"labyrinth,<\/a>
Credit: Alice-In-Wonderland.net<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

He wanders the labyrinth with list in hand, gazing at the thousands of calls to action; some printed on card stock or plastic, some in the form of small video panels.\u00a0 Some say, \u201cchoose me for a life of ease and comfort!\u201d some, \u201cchoose me for eternal health.\u201d others, \u201cI am your best value on something you need desperately.\u201d\u00a0 He checks his scavenger hunt list often as he wanders, gazing at the multicolored panels, peering into bins, occasionally opening a semi-transparent door to see inside better.\u00a0 So many temptations, but where are the items he seeks?<\/p>\n

Occasionally something new tries to seduce him, \u201cpick me,\u201d it purrs, \u201cand I\u2019ll give you infinite pleasure.\u201d\u00a0 He checks the list, \u201cNo, you\u2019re not on the list.\u201d\u00a0 He twists free of its grasp.\u00a0 \u201cI must return with everything on the list and nothing that is not on the list.\u201d\u00a0 The List is sacrosanct.\u00a0 The List must be obeyed.<\/p>\n

He encounters a few others wandering the labyrinth, mostly women.\u00a0 Some seem quite confident of navigating the maze and winning their prize.\u00a0 Occasionally he stands gazing about, clutching his list his eyes pleading for advice \u2013 rules say it is forbidden to ask for help, but help may be accepted if offered freely.\u00a0 Most ignore him, a few smirk knowingly, no one offers.\u00a0\u00a0 He plods on.<\/p>\n

The things he seeks seem to elude him, things he must not choose sing their sultry songs to him. His head spins with the enormity of the task: \u201cWhy oh why did my wife sent ME to the grocery store?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0~\/*_*\\~<\/p>\n

\u00a0How I Survived the Scavenger Hunt<\/h1>\n

For the 15 years or so of our marriage, Marie has been the \u201cshopper\u201d.\u00a0 I go with her sometimes, but my role is to follow along, pushing the cart and occasionally formulating a reasonably intelligent response to questions like, \u201cWould you prefer this flavor or that one?\u201d\u00a0 I rarely pay much attention to what is where or what things are together in which aisle.<\/p>\n

The mantle of Family Shopper was bestowed upon me now because Marie has been sick.\u00a0 Very sick.\u00a0 I\u2019m talking ER and Critical Care Unit sick.\u00a0 She\u2019s back home now, but nowhere near well.\u00a0 Getting from the bedroom to the living room (even in our small home) without toppling over is about as much as I can ask.\u00a0 Driving into town to scour the grocery store for the supplies we need is out of the question.\u00a0 So, that fell to me.\u00a0 For Marie it’s a run to the store, for me it is a scavenger hunt.<\/p>\n

The little tale above is overly-dramatized.\u00a0 I\u2019m not quite<\/em> that pathetic.\u00a0 And to be fair to myself, there was a time when I did all the shopping not only for my family but for a child care facility I operated.\u00a0 This meant multiple stores, including a Sam\u2019s Club; a truck-load of perishable foods and paper goods every week.\u00a0 But I knew the stores.\u00a0 I even had my lists arranged not just by store, but by aisle within each store so I could go in and tick things off the list in order as I walked through.\u00a0 Yes; I have always<\/i> been obsessive compulsive, although I prefer the term \u201cdetail oriented\u201d.\u00a0 It has served me well in my business management affairs.<\/p>\n

It has been a while, however, since I\u2019ve had to make a major supply run.\u00a0 I\u2019d been making notes of what we were low on.\u00a0 I added the things Marie said she thought she could handle that aren\u2019t normally staples for us.\u00a0 And I took requests from the dogs, but had to tell Cochise that T-bone steaks were absolutely out of the question.\u00a0 Would you settle for beef flavored dog biscuits?\u00a0 He just humphed, circled his quilt three times and plopped down with his back to me.<\/p>\n

Add to the usual trickiness the fact that our local Food City is in the midst of an expansion as they almost double the size of the store, so things are not always where they were the last time you were in, even if you have the store lay-out memorized.<\/p>\n

All in all, I think I did well: I won the scavenger hunt.\u00a0 I came home with everything on the list \u2013 something Marie says she has difficulty doing (mostly because she leaves the list at home) — and only a few items that were not on the list.\u00a0 And those were related to items that were<\/em> on the list.\u00a0 For instance, I had Flipside crackers on the list, but when I was standing there scanning the millions of choices in the cracker section, I saw graham crackers and Nilla wafers and thought Marie would enjoy these but we have none at home.\u00a0 So I got them.\u00a0 Slap my wrist if you must, but they were all crackers, and crackers were on the list.\u00a0 Had I come home with\u2026 oh, say\u2026 a new barbecue grill, that would definitely be out of bounds \u2013 unless BBQ sauce were on the list, but it wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

When I got to the check-out area there was only one register open and it was being used to train a newbie.\u00a0 She had muffed something on the prior customer and required a manager override to fix it.\u00a0 Page the manager, wait for him to arrive.\u00a0 The customer was humphing at her.\u00a0 The cashier was flustered already, so I did my level best to be pleasant and not even look<\/i> like I was in any kind of hurry.\u00a0 She did fine.\u00a0 I gave her cash in an amount that she only owed me a dime in change and everyone smiled at everyone and we parted best of friends.\u00a0 Well, not really; but we all (the cashier, the trainer, the bagger) enjoyed the experience much more than if I\u2019d snarled at her for being slow.\u00a0 No one benefits from that.<\/p>\n

Our home is restocked for another week.\u00a0 When that time comes again, I\u2019ll confidently don my pith helmet, arm myself with list and pen, commission an all-terrain buggy and foray into the wilds of grocery land.\u00a0 Buggy?\u00a0 Yeah, well here in the south we call shopping carts \u2018buggys\u2019.\u00a0 It\u2019s part of the charm of rural, southern life, along with scavenger hunts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

He wanders the labyrinth with list in hand, gazing at the thousands of calls to action; some printed on card stock or plastic, some in the form of small video panels.  Some say, “choose me for a life of ease and comfort!” some, “choose me for eternal health.” others, “I am your best value on … Continue reading “The Scavenger Hunt”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,7],"tags":[19],"class_list":["post-5602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-creative","category-life","tag-adventures"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5602"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5602\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21534,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5602\/revisions\/21534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}