The Moments - Chapter 19: Amateur Night on Aisle 12

                As most young kids do, Joey makes routine errands more of an event when he is around.  A trip to the grocery store can be particularly enhanced if I make it with Joey.  Sometimes, he gives me an “aww moment” (see Chapter 8) but, in a shopping setting, he more often creates some “haha moments.”  Being the versatile comedian that he is, this may come in the form of trying to juggle items as I place them in the buggy, speaking about absolutely everything he sees, or telling me why he MUST HAVE something from every aisle we travel in Kroger.  About a year ago, he even tried to help me revive a phone call with my girlfriend.  I had called Krista to ask her something before we finished shopping, and strolled Joey to the side of the store that doesn’t always agree with cell phone signal.  At a point when I couldn’t hear Krista and thought the call had dropped, Joey heard me saying “Honey!  Honey!”  I then felt Joey grabbing my arm to take the phone and heard him yelling “Honey!  Honey!” in his extra-enunciated way.  At the time, Krista couldn’t hear either of us (but the folks looking through the freezer cases could). 

Last night, he added a new form of humor to Joey’s Krogering Revue – stream of consciousness.  Not that this is a foreign concept, but a tiny spark of detail prompting a random combination of thoughts in him makes me think that Joey is either a very talented comedian or a three-year-old who didn’t have much of a nap during the day, or both.  I will add the disclaimer that, before this short rambling began, I had leaned over for one of my own random eye-level conversations (a Kroger-time lesson in life) with Joey about how ashamed I was to be buying 12-packs of Cokes at such an awful price (seriously, two for $9 shouldn’t even be advertised).  He acted like he totally understood and kept confidently saying “Uh huh.”  So, as I leaned down to pick up two 12-packs of Diet Sprite, Joey first stated that “That’s not Coke.  That’s Sprite.”  To which I responded, “Well, Sprite is a kind of Coke.”  [That’s right, folks, this blog reminds us that Coke is a brand, a specific product, and a general category of beverage.]  As I then placed the boxes of Sprite cans in the buggy [Notice that I also didn’t flinch when twice including the word “buggy.”], Joey began a train of thought that just didn’t need to stop:

 

           Joey:  There was one Sprite… Uh-huh.  There was one Sprite between me and Mommy and Gamma.  We went to McDonald’s.

           Me:  Ok, cool.  Did y’all do that for lunch today?  Was it this day? [his frequent phrase for “today”]

           Joey:  No, it wasn’t this day.  Um…  I think it was about 20 years.

           Me:  (fighting the weird look on my face) Wait, you say it was 20 years ago?

           Joey:  Yeah, 20 years ago….  Well, maybe two years ago.  I just know we ate at McDonald’s and that was really cool, and I wanted to go to bridge over troubled water.

           Me:  (laughing a little) Well, yeah.  Who wouldn’t?

           Joey:  Yeah.

           Me:  So, you wanna buy some apple juice tonight? 

 

                I was disappointed that I didn’t have a good follow-up, but my 3-year-old’s newfound concept of long-range time rendered me a little speechless.  He has recently gotten the days of the week well-fixed in his mind and knows some of the usual occurrences on each day.  Apparently, broader spans of time are still a developing concept.  I await the day when he asks if we can go to Chuck E. Cheese, and I can come back with, “Why?  We were just there 20 years ago.”  We’d still go anyway.