DOWN HOME: Buying toothpaste, counting blessings

Posted: 6/23/06

DOWN HOME:
Buying toothpaste, counting blessings

My wife rarely sends me to the grocery store alone. And she never sends me to the store before dinner.

Joanna realizes I’m just a man. Made of flesh and blood. But mostly, with a stomach. And if it’s an empty stomach, I’m no match for the geniuses who arrange all the stuff in a grocery store.

If properly motivated—that means hungry—I can go to the store for a gallon of milk and eggs and return home with stuff my shopping-savvy wife never would buy.

A normal person wouldn’t fall for the crackers and cookies and salsas and salad dressings that lure me like Safeway Sirens. They contain enough preservatives to keep King Tut looking like he’s still 19 for another 4,000 years. But, heavens, they’re tasty.

And even the healthy stuff seems irresistible to a hungry, hungry husband.

Fruit, for example, never looks as good on a tree or on your table as it does in those grocery bins. Grocers must use some sort of special light that makes the oranges oranger, the bananas yellower, and the apples and strawberries and raspberries redder. I’m drooling now, and I’m at least a mile from the nearest fruit section.

My real weakness, and I’m embarrassed to admit this, is cereal. I have to be accompanied by a probation officer to walk down the cereal aisle. The people who think up new kinds of cereal tapped my genetic code and realized I’m a sucker for anything nutty, crunchy with “real fruit” in it. And if the box says “low fat,” I can levitate it off the shelf and into my cart without using my hands.

The other night, however, I was surprised to discover grocery-store variety includes stuff you can’t eat. It was late, and we were splitting the shopping assignment, and Jo asked me to go get some toothpaste.

“Do you know which brand?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.

“Colgate,” she said. I would’ve guessed Crest, but I didn’t tell her this.

“Do you know what kind of Colgate?” she asked. My blank stare indicated I hadn’t a clue. “Whitening, with tartar control,” she instructed.

Minutes later, I stood gazing in wonder upon a display of toothpaste so huge it should make the Great Wall of China re-name itself the Modestly Large Wall of China. Eventually, I found the Colgate section. And later still, I found the “whitening, with tartar control” tubes.

“Do you know how many varieties of Colgate toothpaste this store has? Not counting sizes?” I asked my wife, who was about to send out a search party.

“Twenty-four,” I reported.

“Not surprising,” she said. I adore this woman. Nothing phases her.

The next Sunday, my pastor, Stephen, described going on a medical mission trip to the Amazon. To ease people’s pain, they pulled rotting teeth that couldn’t be saved.

So, next time you feel sorry for yourself, thank God you live in a country where people can choose from 24 kinds of toothpaste, all with the same brand. Lord only knows how many blessings you could count.

–Marv Knox