Supermarket Sweep and Laser Pointers.

As much as I complain about my empty refrigerator, I actually really like to go grocery shopping. I prefer going when the store is completely empty, or only peopled with weirdos. After 11pm, for example, the shoppers are mostly musicians or other night-owls. The aisles are often blocked with the re-stockers, but there's never a line in the self-checkout lane. It also gives me plenty of room to play my own version of "Supermarket Sweep."

When I was a kid, I loved "Supermarket Sweep." I don't even know why, but something about getting to run around the grocery store, grind coffee, grab inflatable ketchup bottles, and fill up your cart with cheeses and contact solution (I always thought the diapers took up too much room), just seemed like fun to me. Honestly, I sometimes had dreams that I was running the final sweep.

One summer I went to a nerd camp, and we were trapped at NKU. The only place we were allowed off-campus was Thriftway, the supermarket up the road a bit. It was like an oasis to us. Jesse and I would walk up there, having been trapped in our dorms and one small patch of grass day in and day out, and Thriftway was the best amusement park we could imagine. We would take carts and challenge each other to find little cans of cat food or Kosher midgets (I know they are now called "petites," but they were still midgets in the '90s). It was very entertaining back then, but that probably says more about the lack of entertainment at nerd camp than it does about the fun of grocery shopping.

Anyway, last week I was tempted to play Supermarket Sweep. But as I always seem to end up at Kroger's on a Wednesday morning -- when it's senior citizen discount day -- it didn't seem right to race through the aisles looking for pickles. Instead, I took out my laser pointer and aimed it at whatever the old people were browsing, and darted around the corner before they could figure out it was me. That was a verrrrrrry fun game.

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