There's no other store like Aldi Part 2

This whole Aldi's thing was brought to mind the other day, when my friend Ann-not-the-call-girl-Ann was almost arrested there.

Ann is about as sunny as you can be. She has a little nuclear family that I tell her looks like those little dollhouse families like The Littles. You know the ones. They all look like they belong together, like a matched set. Heck Ann's family even IS on the small side. Line 'em up, and they go together like peas and carrots, as Forrest Gump would say.

Ann says that however peaceful her life looks, she really lives on Wisteria Lane with all of the other Desperate Housewives. I think, compared to Utter Chaos, it looks pretty mild, except for that whole
escort service thing. Ann, however, always says "the Utters do the most interesting things. Yeah, right. We're always skating on the side of madness, but at least I can say that none of us have done time.

Well Ann went to Aldi's the other day, looking for a deal. She was probably looking for a ham, because when she gets worried about something, she starts stocking up the freezer. When Hurricane Ike was rumbling around last summer, and that whole area was being evacuated, Ann called me and said "don't you just feel like you need to go buy a big ham? Like one of those spiral cut ones? And maybe a turkey?" Uh, no. But that's Ann's response to stress, and if you ask me, it's a mighty fine one. She'll never starve in a crisis, that's for sure.

So she goes to Aldi's, and gets some produce, amongst other things. Gets up to the checkout with her cart full 'o deals, and the cashier starts ringing her up. Stops abruptly when ::gasp:: she finds a cucumber tucked in with the bag of apples that she was ringing. Ann quickly explained that she just put it in there to keep it from rolling around in the cart, but the cashier wasn't buying that one bit. Chewed her out about trying to steal the cucumber, till Ann was ready to put it back.

Handcuffs on register 6 please. We've got ourselves a customer in a pickle.

She ended up convincing the cashier that she really wasn't a thief -- heck, she married to a dentist, for heaven's sake. The woman goes to Yarn conventions for fun, but she had to talk her way out of Aldi's without having the police called, and it was no small feat. She's afraid to go back there now, so I guess she'll be finding her Evacuation Ham somewhere else next time, lest the family be entertaining the refugees whilst the mom is in the clink. The irony of the underscore-less Ann being arrested while the underscored Ann is roaming free does not escape me. Nor would it escape Mr. Little, who looks strangely androgynous, but who is now available on ebay, from Kiddieland, sans Mrs Little, who is probably doing time in the big house. Mr Little now is a devout shopper of Kroger, and the kids haven't touched ham since Mommy went up the river.

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.