Making a List, Checking It Twice?

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LET ME start by saying my husband is very smart, graduated from a really good university that I will not name-drop here for fear of being accused of name-dropping, and is quite successful in his profession. That said, I must ask: How come he’s so clueless?

A few days ago Mitch offered to go to the grocery store to pick up a few things we needed for dinner. Inwardly I groaned, remembering his past solo shopping expeditions, but outwardly I accepted the offer since I didn’t want to go myself. Naturally he said what all men say before they go off to buy food for the family: “Make me a list.” This irks me no end, since he spends an hour every night before bed making detailed To-Do lists for work the next day, but when it comes to food, he can’t make a list. (Hey, open the fridge, buy what isn’t there, how hard is that?)

Moving on. I made a short list; we needed a very few things. Minutes later Mitch called from the store to say he had left the list at home on the kitchen counter. Adept at multitasking, I read the list to him over the phone while simultaneously elevating my blood pressure, then hung up and took an extra pill.

Mitch arrived home. Instead of cole slaw to accompany our barbecued chicken, he had purchased salmon salad.  “Why this?” I asked. He thought it was cole slaw; apparently in his world the two are indistinguishable.

“But there’ s a label right on the top of the clear plastic container that says salmon salad, and it costs five times as much! Didn’t you notice—besides the fact that the stuff inside is not greenish shredded cabbage but pinkish chopped fish—that this little bit of what you believed to be cole slaw cost you $8.75?”

“I thought it was pretty expensive.”

Mitch hopes I will eventually find things like this endearing. In the interest of my blood pressure, I am trying.

—Andrea Rouda

Andrea Rouda blogs at The Daily Droid.