Not the Gathering But the Hunting

Pardon the gender stereotypes, but when you know, you know. Mostly women know. We can't send a man to the store to pick up specific items. You'd think I would have learned my lesson back when I married Hick, and we were living in my $17,000 house. 

I must have been busy with something, or home sick. It was before Genius arrived. Before the era of cell phones, when a mobile phone was cutting-edge, and came in a zippered pouch to keep in the car and plug into the cigarette lighter. My dad had one, but he worked for Southwestern Bell, and had access.

Anyhoo... I gave Hick a list to take to the grocery store. It was still just a grocery store. Walmart Supercenters were not yet a thing. The store was 2-3 miles from my house. Should have been a simple feat for Hick to go buy the things on the list. But NOOOOO! Hick came home with $35 worth of groceries (way back in the early '90s), and not one thing on the list! He said he lost the list. He thought about asking to use the store's phone to call me, but didn't. Let the record show that his "groceries" included ice cream and cookies. $35 worth. Would it have been that hard to drive back and ask for another list? I think not.

MEN love the hunt. The gathering, not so much.

Last week, Hick asked if I needed anything from Walmart. He was going by to pick up dogfood. I told him I DID. Two bottles of garlic aioli, because I can't find it in the grocery stores. And since he'd be on that aisle anyway, one Kraft Mayo in a squeeze bottle. Does that seem hard? I don't think so. I even set both bottles on the top shelf of FRIG II, so Hick could see them when he got his morning Diet Mountain Dew.

Hick took a picture. However... he only took the picture of the aioli. Can you believe that? How much harder would it have been, to consciously cut out the mayo? That's how close they were. Hick called me for something else, and I asked when he was going to the store. He said in the afternoon. That he had an appointment at 2:30, and would go after than. That's when he said he took a picture of the aioli, so he'd know what to get. When I reminded him about the mayo, he said to send him a picture. Which I did, around 1:00.

When Hick came home, this is what he brought me:

I suppose the aioli will be fine, even though it's NOT what I asked for. Maybe the packaging has changed. The old bottle was expired. Hick himself admitted that he got the wrong mayo. 

"I went to Walmart early. I didn't have your picture yet. I like to never found that aioli. I had to ask a boy working there. It took the two of us over 20 minutes to find it. It was on the bottom shelf, behind something else. Even the boy said he KNEW he had stocked it. And then after I'd already bought the mayo, I got the picture, and saw that I didn't get your kind with the pickle on the label. So I went by the grocery store and got the right kind. So you have the two bottles you asked for."

"I asked for TWO bottles of the aioli, and you got one. The mayo doesn't matter about the picture on the label. Which isn't even a pickle! It just needed to be KRAFT mayo. Each kind is a little bit different."

"Well, you got what you got."

Uh huh. Men are all about the hunt. As long as they bring home something, they figure they have done their job. They are terrible at gathering. Any old thing will do.