Cost of Groceries

By Loren Moore

We'll keep Loren alive in our hearts through his wonderful stories!

This morning at breakfast, Johnnie was griping about the high cost of groceries. I give her $400 a month for grocery money, and there are just the two of us for her to feed. She said she spends $100 a week.

"Well where is all the money going? You’re not spending all that much on my groceries."

"Most of it is for you. You know I’m on a diet and don’t eat much."

"Ok, lets see how much my breakfast cost. How much is an eighteen egg carton of eggs?"

She told me $2.29 a carton.

"That’s roughly 13 cents an egg and I eat two eggs every morning. Now, how much does the package of Wright’s thick sliced bacon cost?"

"$6.95 a package," she informed me.

"I always cut the package in half to make the slices easier to cook. So that makes 42 slices per package. I always eat three slices with my two eggs. The bacon cost 7 cents a slice, so my breakfast has cost 47 cents so far. Now add in the cost of my milk and we will know how much you spend on me for breakfast. How much does a gallon of milk cost?"

"The kind of milk you drink cost $2.39 a gallon," Johnnie answers as she picks up today’s newspaper.

"I drink a pint of milk with my breakfast each morning and a pint cost 30 cents, so that makes a grand total of 77 cents cost for groceries for my breakfast. Or if you figure by the week, that’s $5.39. How much does your breakfast cost by the week?"

Johnnie doesn’t answer me. She’s all wrapped up in the paper. So I ask her for the cash register receipts so I can see where all the grocery money goes.

"Ha ha ha ha," she says as she reads the funnies in the paper.

I get up and look through the drawers in the kitchen cabinet until I find her last week’s receipt. Then I go off into my office to see what she has bought with her $100.

I sit down at my desk and pick up a pen. I intend to put a check mark by anything Johnnie shouldn’t be buying with grocery money.

As I look down the list I see VCR tape.

Check

Next I see book.

Check

Snicker candy bars.

Check

Johnnie told me she was on a diet, and besides I haven’t seen any Snicker bars.

One dozen red roses

Check

One package of 12 rolls of toilet paper

"Ok, so that’s not something to eat, I’ll allow it."

Two rolls of paper towels

"I’ll allow these also."

Peanut butter and club crackers

"Now I know these are for me, so I won’t say anything about them."

Diet Cokes and Seven Ups

"Ok, that’s a trade off. Johnnie drinks Diet Cokes and I drink Seven Ups."

When I get through checking off the items that Johnnie should not have spent money on, I take the receipt back into the kitchen to show her. She’s not there. There is a note on the table that says she has gone to the grocery store.

I can hardly wait for her to come home. This time, I’ll go over the cash register receipt with her as she puts the groceries away. But I’m back in the office on the computer when she comes back, and I don’t hear her come in. She has the groceries put up and goes out in the back yard to work in her flowerbeds when I check to see if she has come home yet.

I go to the patio door and tell her I would like to talk to her about what she is spending the grocery money on, and what she told me is a whole nother story for a different time.

*****

© Copyright 2004