See Me Squeegee

So one of my favorite monotony-of-life themes involves those situations in which you have a pretty legitimate reason to go to a grocery store, but then circumstances intervene and you end up with a ridiculous shopping cart of a handful of completely disconnected items, and the person checking you out and/or the people in line near you must think you’re a lunatic.  But there’s a perfectly good explanation…that you can’t tell them or you really are a lunatic.

For example, back right after college, I was taking off from my parents’ house to stay a weekend with some friends in Ann Arbor (CW Chronicles fans, you’ll remember Brent and Sperling’s apartment above China Gate), and obviously I was going to stop at Meijer’s to pick up beer on the way.  On my way (and on my first ever cell phone) they called and asked if I could pick up a plunger while I was at the store.  Naturally I didn’t ask questions and just figured that it needed to be done.  And it wasn’t until I saw the look of disgust on the clerk’s face did I realize that I was a man purchasing exactly two items: a 30-pack of Busch LIght and a toilet plunger.

Anyway, that came back up tonight with the following circumstances:

Tomorrow is Halloween, and as is her custom our HR-ish coworker Michele announced a costume contest with 36 hours’ notice, so we all had to spring into action.  Many of us decided to all dress as our fun-to-mock coworker Tyler (who a couple weeks ago had to let one of us draw a tattoo of our boss on his neck because he lost to me in fantasy football; next week he has to perform a dance routine to Kelis’s Milkshake to complete the bet.  Yep, they pay me to work at this place and this is how I spend my time.)

Now, Tyler is a young buck with Frat Fashion Chic style – he’ll pop a collar now and then and once he matched his pastel polo to his canvas sneakers, and I remind him of this almost daily.  So the costume is easy:

-White shoes from Payless that I can marker up with a pastel marker to match my polo

-Popped collar on said polo

-Axe Body Spray sticking out of my pocket and Axe Hair Gel popping up my hair

-Red Bull and/or Four Loko in hand at all times

Alas, tonight I had to teach until about 10pm, so I didn’t have many options to pick up my Axe and pastel markers.  As I reached CVS, it was closing and they were pushing people out the door, so I had to go to Vons, the grocery store, as a last-ditch effort.  Fortunately they had some pastel Sharpies and some Axe, so I was good to go…but they didn’t have an available express check-out lane, and the two open lanes they had were jammed.  Now, I didn’t want to wait ten minutes for just markers and Axe body spray, so I had to make use of the time.  And like most grocery stores these days, Vons had the club card special where if you buy six bottles of wine you get an insane deal.  I didn’t need wine, but it’s not bad to have around the house in case people stop by or you get invited to dinner and need to bring something, so since I was waiting anyway I figured I could spring 50 bucks or whatever to load up the pantry with wine.  Again, not because I really wanted or needed any, but because I was bored and didn’t want to wait ten minutes in line without something more to show for it.  So I loaded up an armful of wine to go with my body spray and markers.  But here’s the catch – my club card is all mangled and the scenario didn’t take my phone number as a substitute, so a manager had to get involved while the line backed up and so at least 10 people got to spend some time considering my shopping cart which consisted of exactly:

(1) One bottle of Axe Body Spray

(1) One five-pack of pastel highlighter Sharpie markers

(6) Six bottles of wine

What must they have thought?  What kind of a grown-ass man has a shopping order like that?  And how was I note the weirdest order in my own line?  (The girl in front of me was 90% certainly a prostitute eating a Whole Foods salad and buying a carton of soup and a pack of gum)

Comment thread folk – can anyone top either order?