There's no other store like Aldi Part 1

Dan went grocery shopping a couple of weeks ago. He came home and told me how I should shop more often at Aldi's, because they have some great deals. I told him that I stopped going to Aldi years ago, because every time I was there, someone was calling the police. No joke.

I'm sure that there are nice Aldi's. I've actually been to some. But the one by our house is a little ghetto crazy. I remember walking in there one time when Seth was only about two. It was a beautiful summer day. I happened to be babysitting a couple of other kids, so picture me crossing the parking lot with two seven year olds, a six year old, balancing a six month old on my hip whilst holding the two year olds' hand. Yeah, I'm sure that I was a sight, but during this time period, it wasn't at all unusual for me to be travelling with a small village, and that was fine with me. So there I was, corralling the wild animals, when I hear someone yelling from a car across the parking lot. It was obvious that it was directed to me, so I asked what they'd said, because I didn't hear them very well over the kids. "Put some shoes on that baby." What the heck? Why in the world did anyone care whether the baby had shoes on or not? I just looked at the baby, then looked at the Fashion Police and shrugged. "Not my baby."

That was weird enough, but then when we were ready to leave, someone suddenly came running in, yelling for the manager to call the police. "Someone just grabbed some woman and put them in their car and drove off with her screaming." I never did find out what that was about -- maybe she hadn't put shoes on the baby, and the Fashion Popo did a driveby -- but it was enough for me to avoid the place like the plague for a while.

Some months later, I decided to try Aldi's again, this time unaccompanied. Everything was going fine till I decided to go get in line. The line was rather long, so I just sat back and waited. There was an older man several people up from me, and he suddenly started yelling at a girl in front of him. Apparently, she had left the line briefly to go get one more thing, and he took offense when she jumped into the line in front of him. She tried to explain to him that she was with her friend, who had saved their place in line whilst she grabbed one last thing. Well, Grumpy Old Man was having none of that. He continued to carry one, and the volume kept getting a little louder, till finally Grumpy Old Man yells "why don't you go back to Africa where you came from?"

It was during that awful silence that I thought that perhaps I was going to be doing a different kind of checking out than I had originally planned.

Sister girlfriend was about to take her earrings off when Grumpy Old Man was escorted from the place, and we all breathed a huge sigh of relief that we might actually get out of there in one piece after all. I mean honestly, who says stupidity like that, in today's world? Who even thinks it? I'm telling you, the cheap green beans ain't worth risking being in the middle of a riot, so I'm a tried and true Marsh girl now. Can't shop at Kroger, cause the deli department is sitting on the site of our old church's sanctuary, which is just wrong in a lot of ways. I stay with Marsh, cause although it's not on holy ground, the worst thing that's ever happened there is the day the clerk didn't scan my discount card. The ensuing chaos resulted in me leaving the entire cart, with $400 of groceries, sitting at the counter while they all tried to figure out what to do when the clerk screws up. And then there was the time that I got all my groceries rung up, paid for them, then left the whole schmoley at the store. Don't ask me how that happened, and Dan still teases me about that to this day.

So if you, like me, don't sweat the price anymore, then check out this vintage grocery themed dishtowel from callmejasper, on etsy. Not sure if the baby's got shoes, and how the heck did she shop with that dog? But at least she got out in one piece. More Tales 'o Aldi tomorrow.