Shopping with 2 Year Olds

Sometimes when I’m at the store to pick something up, I get to see the most entertaining things.  Ever watched people try to pick out vegetables?  Fascinating. 

Sometimes, when I’m at the store I provide great entertainment for those around me.  For instance, last night I took my daughter to a local department store to pick out a birthday present for a school friend who is turning 5.  Now, I’m assuming that this friend is like just about every 5 year old boy I’ve ever met – they like guns, cars, planes, action heroes, rockets, etc.  My daughter, however, has different ideas.  Up and down each aisle we go, she diligently looking at every price tag to find one that is below the pre-set requirement of $10 as her first set of criteria for any toy up for consideration.  Upon finding one, her next set of criteria is the amount of pink the toy contains – the more the better.  Finally, if it is a toy that comes with a crown, dress up clothes, or a house to put it in, we have a winner. 

After inspecting every aisle of the entire toy department, we finally settled on a super hero puzzle and a Spongebob Squarepants bouncy ball.

More than a few times I saw people chuckle as I would walk past with my daughter in tow: "No, honey, I don’t think that he’ll like the princess barbie dress up extravaganza.  Ohh..here’s a remote control uzi grenade cannon launcher… how about that?"

"No, daddy."

However, this does not compare with the experience my wife had with my son at the grocery store the other day.  They were in the bakery section looking for some items on her list when my boy discovered 2 things:  

1.  His arms are long enough to reach that pie on the shelf.  

2.  Newton appears to have been right about gravity.

Now, I’m not sure of the proper etiquette when fleeing the scene of a pie-dropping, but I’m pretty sure that it involves stuffing as much of the pie contents back into the plastic pie-shaped thing it comes in, cramming what’s left of the pie, the contents, and the plastic pie-shaped thing as far back on the shelf as you can muster, sweeping what’s left under the shelf with one great arc of your foot, and calmly walking towards produce to avoid raising any suspicion.

I wasn’t there, but I’m pretty sure that if I was, this is what I would have done.