Friday Joyce went to the grocery store. I was too sick to think about going with her. We were very low on everything so she loaded up on the groceries. She spent $178 and she thought that was high, but it seems like it costs more every time we have a big refill. She kept thinking about that at times through Saturday. This morning she was going to get me some vitamin water at the local Dollar General and as she was rooting through her purse she noticed the receipt from Friday's grocery run. She began looking it over again when she went down the list she noted $64 for a single Napa cabbage. She almost passed out! "I'm headed back to the grocery store," she said. It turned out the checkout clerk entered the UPC code for Romaine lettuce and then instead of entering the number of lettuce bunches bought, she immediately started entering the UPC code for Napa cabbage the miscue came up $64 for the single Napa.
I was still not in shape to go to the grocery with her, but as I sat thinking about the situation; I remembered our shopping trips back in 1966. We would go to the nearby Safeway. I could remember every price of each item we picked up and at the same time keep a running calculation of how much we had in the cart. Groceries were a small fraction of current prices and we would fill three or four bags for the $20 that we had to spend. Once my mental calculator hit $20 our shopping was done and we headed for the register. Now I can't remember a fraction of item prices in the time we go from the shelf to the register and I couldn't begin to use the mental calculator and hope for any useable result. Old age can be a cruel thing.
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