Idle Talk with Betty

... my friend, Betty ...

Miranda and I went to Costco. Both Alice and Michael wanted to hop on the cart that I was driving. But before I had begun to move the buggy, they changed their minds and went with their mother. Miranda and I just switched carts and off I went with Betty Blanche. It has been a long time since I have driven a baby around a store. I could see her looking for the rest of her pack, her neck twisting, her eyes darting here and there in hopes of running into them.

We did pass by them at the Dairy section, whoops and hollers coming from both carts, giving each other waves and cheers. The cheers were for my cart as I had already filled up my basket: one super giant package of paper towels and one super giant package of toilet paper and that about fills up a cart. Thereafter, Betty began to bend and turn in her seat, helping me to find space in the cart for the smaller items as I would try to put them in.

I was trying to make our cart seem like more fun that being with her siblings. I didn’t realize I was talking to her all of the time until I said to her, “I have circled the drug isles twice now, Betty, and I can’t find the Olay Ultra Moist bars that are on sale.”

A clerk in the optical section called over her counter to me and said, “They are just over there in the wire cage section.

The Hot Dog Shop.

That is what the kids call the food court at Costco. Miranda waited in one of the long line-ups to buy the food. The very long line-ups. The kids and I sat at a table waiting. Betty Blanche has a short waiting period. Besides that she only had one boot – one of the times when she had kicked off her boot in the car so at least it was in a known space. I couldn't put her down and let her run bootless.   I entertained her with a few cold wet napkins and wiped the dried chocolate from her face with them. She slithered off of the bench and I could see she was going for a discarded French fry she had spotted on the floor. I kicked it aside. I went to the condiment section and filled up small cups with ketchup. I gave her a fork and let her transfer ketchup to her mouth.

“That is OK,” said Miranda when I confessed to her my bad grand-parenting. “In our family we are still in the space where we call ketchup part of the vegetable family.”

On the way home the music in the car was a CD by Sharon, Lois and Braum. Miranda said that the disc owes them no money, for it is constantly played in the car. I listened to “Ballin’ the Jack” among other tunes and I was reminded that I must look up the words and practice them so that we can sing and dance to it, some night after supper.
Maybe tonight.

Arta