No kid likes going to the doctor. Whether or not they understand that seeing the doctor is a good thing and will keep them healthy, the reality of the situation is that usually when a kid goes to see a doctor, they are often poked and prodded unpleasantly, and sometimes given a shot.
Shots hurt! They’re easier to handle for adults, who have more experience with pain and know that it won’t last. But for a kid (especially an infant), it’s like, “THIS IS THE WORST PAIN EVER” even though it quickly stops.
The last time I can remember getting a shot as a kid, as the doctor was getting the shot ready, he told me to count to ten to distract myself because I seemed nervous. He didn’t specify how quickly, so in my head I counted: “one, two, threefourfivesixseveneightnineten” and was finished before he had even started the shot, so I had to wince through it.
The worst part about shots is not the pain of the shot itself but the apprehension of the pain. For kids, the apprehension may start when they get to the doctor, but for an adult, the apprehension starts when the appointment is made, whether the appointment is for the adult or for their children.
The first time my oldest daughter got a shot, I cried. My emotions were a jumble. I was nervous because I knew it would hurt her and she would cry, and that it had been my decision to make sure she got these things that would hurt. Even though I knew she needed them, the fact that she would be hurting and crying and that there was nothing I could do to take the pain away made me feel very guilty. My daughter felt my apprehensive, guilty mood and became even more apprehensive herself, and was more upset because of it. The nurse finished and got out of my way quickly, saying, “Go ahead and comfort her.” I whisked her up into my arms and rocked her until she decided that she was okay.
It’s amazing what a little experience can do. Today I took my younger daughter to the doctor. The nurse came in with the shots and laid my daughter on her back. I started to get nervous, but remembered that it would be worse for her if I did, so smiled down at her and tried to exude a calm aura. My attitude made all the difference. She got two shots, one in each leg, and didn’t cry a bit after the first one and only for about five seconds after the second one. Everyone praised her for doing such a good job.
Shots aren’t scary. I don’t want my daughters to dread going to the doctor because of them. So I'll just check my sympathy apprehension, and everything will be fine.
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Monday, September 3, 2012
The Three Day Weekend Debate
Three day weekends are nice. You get an extra day off, and a shorter week at work. So whose idea was it that the extra day off should be on a Monday?
Very few people would say that Monday is their favorite day of the week. It’s the first day of the work week, the first day after a break from work, and there are four more days stretching out after it before the next break. It’s got that “sigh, back to work” feeling that stays with you all day and every daydream you have is about next weekend.
You’ll find quite a few people whose favorite day is Friday. It’s the first day before a two day break. Depending on what time you stop working, the rest of the day can be treated like the weekend, because you know you don’t have to get up early to get to work the next day. It has that “WOO, PARTY!” feeling that stays with you all day and every daydream you have is about all the awesome stuff you’re gonna do during the weekend.
A week that is shaved down to four days because of a three day weekend just transfers the feelings of a Friday or Monday to the closest work day.
If Friday is the day off, the feelings of elation that you’d normally have that day are pushed forward into Thursday. If the weekend claims Monday, all those feelings of drudgery are held off until Tuesday.
My proposal is that we have three day weekends with the extra day taking place on Friday. A Friday off not only means that the week is shorter but that you can start celebrating the end of the week earlier. You’re still going to have a Monday feeling on Tuesday if Monday is your day off, so why put off that feeling? If Friday is your day off, you get to have the “IT’S THE WEEKEND” feeling earlier.
I’m not sure where exactly I should go to start the “Move Labor Day to Friday” movement, but I certainly can’t do it today.
It’s a day off.
Very few people would say that Monday is their favorite day of the week. It’s the first day of the work week, the first day after a break from work, and there are four more days stretching out after it before the next break. It’s got that “sigh, back to work” feeling that stays with you all day and every daydream you have is about next weekend.
You’ll find quite a few people whose favorite day is Friday. It’s the first day before a two day break. Depending on what time you stop working, the rest of the day can be treated like the weekend, because you know you don’t have to get up early to get to work the next day. It has that “WOO, PARTY!” feeling that stays with you all day and every daydream you have is about all the awesome stuff you’re gonna do during the weekend.
A week that is shaved down to four days because of a three day weekend just transfers the feelings of a Friday or Monday to the closest work day.
If Friday is the day off, the feelings of elation that you’d normally have that day are pushed forward into Thursday. If the weekend claims Monday, all those feelings of drudgery are held off until Tuesday.
My proposal is that we have three day weekends with the extra day taking place on Friday. A Friday off not only means that the week is shorter but that you can start celebrating the end of the week earlier. You’re still going to have a Monday feeling on Tuesday if Monday is your day off, so why put off that feeling? If Friday is your day off, you get to have the “IT’S THE WEEKEND” feeling earlier.
I’m not sure where exactly I should go to start the “Move Labor Day to Friday” movement, but I certainly can’t do it today.
It’s a day off.
Friday, August 31, 2012
Blue Moon
I like to look at the moon whenever it is bright, whether it is full or not. Tonight it will be full, for the second time this month, a phenomenon known to astronomers as a blue moon.
It’s not actually blue. After reading about it, it’s apparently just something that happens once every two and a half years or so. At first, I thought it was a bit silly to be going on and on about this, because obviously whatever’s going on in the sky isn’t referencing the human-imposed measurement of time. It just happens to be doing what it’s doing, and since August is a long month, it just happens to be waxing toward a full moon again while it still happens to be August.
But what about lunar calendars? In the solar calendar (the one we follow is called the Gregorian calendar, named for Pope Gregory XIII, who ordered the tweaking of the previously used solar calender named for Roman emperor Julius Caesar), our months have 31, 30, or 28 days apiece, and every four years we add one day to our year, and call it a Leap Year. Lunar calendars (such as the Hebrew calendar or the Buddhist calendar) measure their months by the moon and by the seasons. Twelve moons make one year, three moons per season.
But this particular astronomical occurrence is a thirteenth moon, which adds an extra month to a lunar year.
Since many different cultures used a lunar calendar before changing to a solar calendar, there are many different ways to deal with the extra “leap” moon in a year that had thirteen instead of twelve. Some cultures watched the seasons and others the stars to determine when this leap month should be inserted. One group of First Nations peoples living in what is now Canada simply began their year when the salmon spawned and counted the time for ten months, then left the time that followed uncounted, until the salmon spawned again.
Despite the name, a “blue moon” is not actually blue. It’s still the moon. It doesn’t change color just because our man made calendars regard it differently than other full moons. There are times when the moon looks like it is a certain color, but that’s usually because something else is in the way. The moon looks blue most often when smoke, soot, or ash is between us and the moon. The 1883 eruption of Krakatoa blasted enough debris into the sky to make the moon look blue for two years afterward.
So why do we call it blue if it’s not? We can’t say “once every two and a half years or so when there’s thirteen full moons in a year instead of twelve.” But how did it come to be called “blue” in the first place? Like many things in our culture, the reason can be traced back to the Church.
The date for Easter is traditionally the first Sunday after the Northward equinox (or March equinox). On the years when an extra moon appeared, it was up to the Church to tell the people whether the moon was indeed the Easter moon or if Lent would be extended an extra month. They called this extra moon belewe, meaning “betrayer.” I can’t seem to find whether it was called this because it betrayed the hopes of those waiting for Easter to arrive or if it was for some reason named for Judas Iscariot, the Betrayer. Either way, it’s easy to see how it became "blue;" just sound it out: be-le-we. Blue.
We say “once in a blue moon,” but we mean “once in a great while.” The time period is not defined. So maybe the phrase shouldn’t refer to the precisely calculated occurrence of a thirteenth moon in a lunar cycle, but to the less precise occasional obscuring of the moon by dust in the sky.
However we define it and whatever we call it, a full moon shining in the sky is a wonderful thing to behold. Enjoy the moon tonight, no matter what color it is.
It’s not actually blue. After reading about it, it’s apparently just something that happens once every two and a half years or so. At first, I thought it was a bit silly to be going on and on about this, because obviously whatever’s going on in the sky isn’t referencing the human-imposed measurement of time. It just happens to be doing what it’s doing, and since August is a long month, it just happens to be waxing toward a full moon again while it still happens to be August.
But what about lunar calendars? In the solar calendar (the one we follow is called the Gregorian calendar, named for Pope Gregory XIII, who ordered the tweaking of the previously used solar calender named for Roman emperor Julius Caesar), our months have 31, 30, or 28 days apiece, and every four years we add one day to our year, and call it a Leap Year. Lunar calendars (such as the Hebrew calendar or the Buddhist calendar) measure their months by the moon and by the seasons. Twelve moons make one year, three moons per season.
But this particular astronomical occurrence is a thirteenth moon, which adds an extra month to a lunar year.
Since many different cultures used a lunar calendar before changing to a solar calendar, there are many different ways to deal with the extra “leap” moon in a year that had thirteen instead of twelve. Some cultures watched the seasons and others the stars to determine when this leap month should be inserted. One group of First Nations peoples living in what is now Canada simply began their year when the salmon spawned and counted the time for ten months, then left the time that followed uncounted, until the salmon spawned again.
Despite the name, a “blue moon” is not actually blue. It’s still the moon. It doesn’t change color just because our man made calendars regard it differently than other full moons. There are times when the moon looks like it is a certain color, but that’s usually because something else is in the way. The moon looks blue most often when smoke, soot, or ash is between us and the moon. The 1883 eruption of Krakatoa blasted enough debris into the sky to make the moon look blue for two years afterward.
So why do we call it blue if it’s not? We can’t say “once every two and a half years or so when there’s thirteen full moons in a year instead of twelve.” But how did it come to be called “blue” in the first place? Like many things in our culture, the reason can be traced back to the Church.
The date for Easter is traditionally the first Sunday after the Northward equinox (or March equinox). On the years when an extra moon appeared, it was up to the Church to tell the people whether the moon was indeed the Easter moon or if Lent would be extended an extra month. They called this extra moon belewe, meaning “betrayer.” I can’t seem to find whether it was called this because it betrayed the hopes of those waiting for Easter to arrive or if it was for some reason named for Judas Iscariot, the Betrayer. Either way, it’s easy to see how it became "blue;" just sound it out: be-le-we. Blue.
We say “once in a blue moon,” but we mean “once in a great while.” The time period is not defined. So maybe the phrase shouldn’t refer to the precisely calculated occurrence of a thirteenth moon in a lunar cycle, but to the less precise occasional obscuring of the moon by dust in the sky.
However we define it and whatever we call it, a full moon shining in the sky is a wonderful thing to behold. Enjoy the moon tonight, no matter what color it is.
Thursday, August 30, 2012
It's Too Hot to Think of a Title
It’s too hot to write.
The drought the state has been experiencing has led the local government to impose water restrictions for the first time in ten years. The only impact this has on me (since we don’t water the lawn in the first place) is to make me feel guilty when I’m rinsing something in the sink or taking a shower.
To make things, worse, the weather tried to play a terrible trick on us last week. It was gorgeous and cool, and every day either looked like it would rain or did rain, at least for a few minutes. I had the windows open for three or four days, and the air conditioner off.
But all that is over now.
I was very excited for autumn. It was tolerable to sit in the living room, where there’s no air flow, because there was a lovely breeze blowing in through the window.
Today we’re supposed to get record heat.
The laptop is too hot to keep on my lap.
It’s too hot to write.
The drought the state has been experiencing has led the local government to impose water restrictions for the first time in ten years. The only impact this has on me (since we don’t water the lawn in the first place) is to make me feel guilty when I’m rinsing something in the sink or taking a shower.
To make things, worse, the weather tried to play a terrible trick on us last week. It was gorgeous and cool, and every day either looked like it would rain or did rain, at least for a few minutes. I had the windows open for three or four days, and the air conditioner off.
But all that is over now.
I was very excited for autumn. It was tolerable to sit in the living room, where there’s no air flow, because there was a lovely breeze blowing in through the window.
Today we’re supposed to get record heat.
The laptop is too hot to keep on my lap.
It’s too hot to write.
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
The Ordering of Narnia
One of the first things you do when you get married is to move all your stuff into the same place. So, shortly after my husband and I were united, I set about uniting our book collection. My paltry handful seemed like nothing beside the pile of tomes that he had already acquired. I was arranging the bookshelves by author, matching up which of Tolkien’s and Shakespeare’s works we had duplicates of.
And then I got to C.S. Lewis.
“What’s this?” I asked, putting down the box set of his space trilogy and picking up another boxed set. “The Chronicles of Narnia,” he answered. “But why is it all... wrong?” I gestured at it in confusion, and picked up my own boxed Chronicles to compare. “It’s not wrong, it’s just in a different order,” he corrected me. I paused for a moment and then asserted, “It’s wrong.”
In October of 1950, Clive Staples Lewis (“Jack,” to his friends) published a novel for children entitled The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Though he never thought he would write a sequel, in the five years following, he wrote and published six more books that took place in his fictional world of Narnia. The series has sold over one hundred million copies in forty-seven different languages.
People like it.
But like many other things imported to America from Britain, once it got here, the Americans managed to muck it all up. The first American publisher, Macmillan, confused American readers immediately by numbering the books. Since they left them in the original order of publication, in 1994, when Harper Collins got the rights to publish the series, they decided to reorder the books chronologically, based on an excerpt from a letter written by Lewis to an American fan.
Today, we use the word “fan” to indicate when we like something: “I am a fan of The Chronicles of Narnia.” But it’s actually an abbreviation of another word, fanatical, a synonym of “crazy.” As in, “People can get quite fanatical about the order in which the Chronicles of Narnia are read.” From the violence of our arguments, “fanatical” is a pretty appropriate word to use.
Anyone who bought the series in a box set (published by Macmillan) before 1994 asserts that the correct way to enjoy the books is by discovering the lamppost in the wood with Lucy, then delighting in the triumphant return of the Kings and Queens to aid the rebels, then enjoying a journey of exploration to the end of the world, then following the signs to the lost prince, then a flight from Calormen, then world-hopping by way of the Wood Between the Worlds, and finally fighting The Last Battle against those who would mislead the faithful with a false Aslan. Those who bought it after 1994 are convinced that the reader should start with the beginning of the world and proceed in order to the end.
It’s probably pretty easy to see which side of the argument I come down on.
My biggest problem with the chronological order of things is that The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe tells the tale of the children’s journeys into Narnia, their efforts to free it from tyranny, and their own time as wise and just rulers; The Horse and His Boy takes place during the golden age of their rule. So in order to read these books chronologically, a reader would have to stop reading in the middle (well, near the end, anyway) of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, read The Horse and His Boy, and then go back and finish the first one.
The second objection that I have is that if you read The Magician’s Nephew (which tells the story of the creation of Narnia and one boy’s interference with it) before The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the mystery of the lamppost is no longer a mystery to you, since you will know exactly where it came from and why it was there. Also, it’s hard to continue reading a series if you don’t enjoy the first book, and since The Magician’s Nephew is my least favorite in the series, I’m always afraid that it will put off someone who has not had a chance to realize what an awesome world Narnia is.
Thirdly, the series in its original published format is already mostly chronological. The first four are in chronological order, and the fifth is a semi-sequel, a story that could only have been written by an author that was very familiar with the world he had created. And lots of series get their origin stories written long after the first book is published. You wouldn’t sit someone down that was completely unfamiliar with Star Wars and make them watch the prequel trilogy first, would you? (For those of you uninformed in the utter failings of George Lucas, doing such a thing would be blasphemous.)
Myself and a friend of mine were having a very intellectual argument about it the other day. It consisted mostly of “I’m right and you’re wrong,” “No, actually, you’re wrong...” Since we weren’t getting anywhere, I decided to bring the argument to a close: “there’s most likely nothing you could say that would convince me of your being correct,” I told her. “So since this isn’t an issue of ‘friendship deal breaker,’ let’s just agree to disagree.” She agreed, and laughed.
Finally, I would like to share a quote from the same letter that C.S. Lewis wrote to the fan who was asking for clarification about the order of the series; a quote that everyone, on either side of the issue, seems to overlook when asserting the author’s desire for the books to be read in whatever order. “The series was not planned beforehand... So perhaps it does not matter very much in which order anyone read them.”1
Really, the only thing that truly matters is that people enjoy them. The Chronicles of Narnia is a wonderful series for people of any age. If you haven’t read it, do. Just don’t cheat and think that watching the movies is good enough. Now, that’s an argument in which, I think, every Narnia fan would come down on the same side.
1 Dorsett, Lyle; Marjorie Lamp Mead (ed.) (1995) C. S. Lewis: Letters to Children. Touchstone.
And then I got to C.S. Lewis.
“What’s this?” I asked, putting down the box set of his space trilogy and picking up another boxed set. “The Chronicles of Narnia,” he answered. “But why is it all... wrong?” I gestured at it in confusion, and picked up my own boxed Chronicles to compare. “It’s not wrong, it’s just in a different order,” he corrected me. I paused for a moment and then asserted, “It’s wrong.”
In October of 1950, Clive Staples Lewis (“Jack,” to his friends) published a novel for children entitled The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Though he never thought he would write a sequel, in the five years following, he wrote and published six more books that took place in his fictional world of Narnia. The series has sold over one hundred million copies in forty-seven different languages.
People like it.
But like many other things imported to America from Britain, once it got here, the Americans managed to muck it all up. The first American publisher, Macmillan, confused American readers immediately by numbering the books. Since they left them in the original order of publication, in 1994, when Harper Collins got the rights to publish the series, they decided to reorder the books chronologically, based on an excerpt from a letter written by Lewis to an American fan.
Today, we use the word “fan” to indicate when we like something: “I am a fan of The Chronicles of Narnia.” But it’s actually an abbreviation of another word, fanatical, a synonym of “crazy.” As in, “People can get quite fanatical about the order in which the Chronicles of Narnia are read.” From the violence of our arguments, “fanatical” is a pretty appropriate word to use.
Anyone who bought the series in a box set (published by Macmillan) before 1994 asserts that the correct way to enjoy the books is by discovering the lamppost in the wood with Lucy, then delighting in the triumphant return of the Kings and Queens to aid the rebels, then enjoying a journey of exploration to the end of the world, then following the signs to the lost prince, then a flight from Calormen, then world-hopping by way of the Wood Between the Worlds, and finally fighting The Last Battle against those who would mislead the faithful with a false Aslan. Those who bought it after 1994 are convinced that the reader should start with the beginning of the world and proceed in order to the end.
It’s probably pretty easy to see which side of the argument I come down on.
My biggest problem with the chronological order of things is that The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe tells the tale of the children’s journeys into Narnia, their efforts to free it from tyranny, and their own time as wise and just rulers; The Horse and His Boy takes place during the golden age of their rule. So in order to read these books chronologically, a reader would have to stop reading in the middle (well, near the end, anyway) of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, read The Horse and His Boy, and then go back and finish the first one.
The second objection that I have is that if you read The Magician’s Nephew (which tells the story of the creation of Narnia and one boy’s interference with it) before The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the mystery of the lamppost is no longer a mystery to you, since you will know exactly where it came from and why it was there. Also, it’s hard to continue reading a series if you don’t enjoy the first book, and since The Magician’s Nephew is my least favorite in the series, I’m always afraid that it will put off someone who has not had a chance to realize what an awesome world Narnia is.
Thirdly, the series in its original published format is already mostly chronological. The first four are in chronological order, and the fifth is a semi-sequel, a story that could only have been written by an author that was very familiar with the world he had created. And lots of series get their origin stories written long after the first book is published. You wouldn’t sit someone down that was completely unfamiliar with Star Wars and make them watch the prequel trilogy first, would you? (For those of you uninformed in the utter failings of George Lucas, doing such a thing would be blasphemous.)
Myself and a friend of mine were having a very intellectual argument about it the other day. It consisted mostly of “I’m right and you’re wrong,” “No, actually, you’re wrong...” Since we weren’t getting anywhere, I decided to bring the argument to a close: “there’s most likely nothing you could say that would convince me of your being correct,” I told her. “So since this isn’t an issue of ‘friendship deal breaker,’ let’s just agree to disagree.” She agreed, and laughed.
Finally, I would like to share a quote from the same letter that C.S. Lewis wrote to the fan who was asking for clarification about the order of the series; a quote that everyone, on either side of the issue, seems to overlook when asserting the author’s desire for the books to be read in whatever order. “The series was not planned beforehand... So perhaps it does not matter very much in which order anyone read them.”1
Really, the only thing that truly matters is that people enjoy them. The Chronicles of Narnia is a wonderful series for people of any age. If you haven’t read it, do. Just don’t cheat and think that watching the movies is good enough. Now, that’s an argument in which, I think, every Narnia fan would come down on the same side.
1 Dorsett, Lyle; Marjorie Lamp Mead (ed.) (1995) C. S. Lewis: Letters to Children. Touchstone.
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Calling In
I always sort of envy my husband when he doesn’t feel well. Not because I like to be sick, but because he has the ability to do what he needs to to feel better again. There’s no way I can just make a phone call to tell my superiors that I’m not coming in and then roll back into bed to sleep again.
When I worked at my first job, it was always a pain to be sick when I knew I had to work because I always had to find someone else to cover my shift. It wasn’t usually worth letting anyone in charge know about it, since the general attitude was “so what? You won’t get fired if there’s a person here to work, we don’t care if it’s you or someone else.” The only way I could get the management to help me out with it is if I could hardly stop puking long enough to help them understand the situation over the phone.
Another place I worked later had a better system: for every shift they had the number of people necessary on the schedule, plus a “call-in.” If someone was hurt or sick or too hungover to get out of bed (this, more often than anything else), then the manager had someone on the schedule who was expecting to have to come in and work.
Today, the only person I can report my illness to is my mother. If it were a weekend, she could swoop in and whisk my children away so that I could get some restful sleep, unbothered by the sounds of screeching or crashing, or by the fear that I will walk out into the kitchen and over tons of broken glass. But since she has her own responsibilities, I’ll have to explain to my two year old the best I can that mommy doesn’t feel well, and try (in vain) to convince my six month old that mommy’s head hurts when she hears screaming and crying.
They definitely won’t accept something like, “I’m sick today, Boss, I can’t come in.”
Monday, August 27, 2012
How to Forget Something at the Grocery Store
How to Forget Something at the Grocery Store
Step 1: Do not write it down. If you make a list, you are guaranteed to remember at least a few of the things on the list, even if you successfully manage to leave the list at home.
Step 2: Make a list in your head instead. This works best if you have more than four but less than seven things you’d like to forget at the grocery store. Three things are easily remembered. Milk, eggs, bread. Not a brain buster. But four things: Milk, eggs, bread... what was that other thing? Oh yeah, butt paste. Chances are if there are four things on your list, you will forget at least one of them, maybe even two!
Step 3: Go to the grocery store without checking in your refrigerator, your pantry, or any of the recipes that you are planning to use in the near future. If you don’t realize that you need something in the first place, you are guaranteed to find out that you needed it only when you get back home.
Step 4: At the store, do not go directly to get the things that you need. Browse around. Check the prices for onions. Do you need onions? Check the prices for paper towels instead. That way, you might forget to go past the produce section at all.
Step 5: Ask yourself or any shopping companions (or if you’re up for it, any random passers by) if you’ve forgotten anything. Run down that list of things you had in your head every time, but mix up the order. Butt paste, bread, eggs, milk... milk, eggs, butt paste, um... wait, there were four things, what am I forgetting?
Step 6: When the checker asks if you “found everything okay,” reply in the affirmative, but make sure to tell them that you’re sure you’ve forgotten something and that they’ll probably see you back again within the hour. You’ll know you’ve done this correctly if you watch the cashier’s facial expression when they look at a nearby fellow employee to let them know that you’re another one of those crazies.
Step 7: If by chance you remember something that you forgot to grab while you’re still in the parking lot, on no account should you go back for it. Don’t worry, even though you’re driving away with the realization that you forgot the milk, someone will inevitably blow a stop sign or cut you off or drive fifteen to twenty miles under the speed limit in front of you while you’re on your way home, so you’ll forget that you remembered, and that totally counts as forgetting.
Step 8: Unload & put away the groceries that you ended up purchasing. This will put you in unavoidable contact with your refrigerator and your pantry, and maybe even those pesky recipes with their uppity lists of "necessary" ingredients.
Step 9: Enjoy that “ugh, I can’t believe I forgot the [insert forgotten item here] at the grocery store; I was just there!” feeling.
If these simple steps are followed, you cannot fail to forget any number of things at the grocery store. Keep following this blog for many other helpful how-tos, including “How to Call Your Brother to See if His Wife Has Any Jalapeños” and “How to Forget to Go to the Grocery Store in the First Place.”
Step 1: Do not write it down. If you make a list, you are guaranteed to remember at least a few of the things on the list, even if you successfully manage to leave the list at home.
Step 2: Make a list in your head instead. This works best if you have more than four but less than seven things you’d like to forget at the grocery store. Three things are easily remembered. Milk, eggs, bread. Not a brain buster. But four things: Milk, eggs, bread... what was that other thing? Oh yeah, butt paste. Chances are if there are four things on your list, you will forget at least one of them, maybe even two!
Step 3: Go to the grocery store without checking in your refrigerator, your pantry, or any of the recipes that you are planning to use in the near future. If you don’t realize that you need something in the first place, you are guaranteed to find out that you needed it only when you get back home.
Step 4: At the store, do not go directly to get the things that you need. Browse around. Check the prices for onions. Do you need onions? Check the prices for paper towels instead. That way, you might forget to go past the produce section at all.
Step 5: Ask yourself or any shopping companions (or if you’re up for it, any random passers by) if you’ve forgotten anything. Run down that list of things you had in your head every time, but mix up the order. Butt paste, bread, eggs, milk... milk, eggs, butt paste, um... wait, there were four things, what am I forgetting?
Step 6: When the checker asks if you “found everything okay,” reply in the affirmative, but make sure to tell them that you’re sure you’ve forgotten something and that they’ll probably see you back again within the hour. You’ll know you’ve done this correctly if you watch the cashier’s facial expression when they look at a nearby fellow employee to let them know that you’re another one of those crazies.
Step 7: If by chance you remember something that you forgot to grab while you’re still in the parking lot, on no account should you go back for it. Don’t worry, even though you’re driving away with the realization that you forgot the milk, someone will inevitably blow a stop sign or cut you off or drive fifteen to twenty miles under the speed limit in front of you while you’re on your way home, so you’ll forget that you remembered, and that totally counts as forgetting.
Step 8: Unload & put away the groceries that you ended up purchasing. This will put you in unavoidable contact with your refrigerator and your pantry, and maybe even those pesky recipes with their uppity lists of "necessary" ingredients.
Step 9: Enjoy that “ugh, I can’t believe I forgot the [insert forgotten item here] at the grocery store; I was just there!” feeling.
If these simple steps are followed, you cannot fail to forget any number of things at the grocery store. Keep following this blog for many other helpful how-tos, including “How to Call Your Brother to See if His Wife Has Any Jalapeños” and “How to Forget to Go to the Grocery Store in the First Place.”
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