As a column writer, every week I hope for some “nugget” that I can transform into column material. Last week, I got fortunate in having two such “nuggets” unintentionally dropped into my lap.

So, I’m using both this week. These stories are true, but I’ve taken literary liberty and altered some of the circumstances to protect the guilty.

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A 30ish-aged farmer wuz having a bad day. He’d had an equipment breakdown in the field. He’d gashed a knuckle when a wrench slipped. He wuz in town ordering the expensive parts. He’d just got into his pickup to head home when he got a text from his wife.

She told him to stop by the grocery store and buy her some cupcake papers because she needed to bake some cupcakes to take to a 4-H meeting she wuz taking their kids to that evening.

So, although it griped the farmer to have to waste time in the grocery store, he dutifully went to do his wife’s bidding. Like most men, he was about clueless as to where to find cupcake papers in the store. 

He looked up and down the aisles for the cupcake papers. A store clerk asked  him if he needed help. His farmer pride prevented him from accepting assistance.

For another 15 minutes he fruitlessly looked for the cupcake papers — his blood pressure and his neck getting redder by the minute. 

Finally, in exasperation, he finally ran down a store employee who told him the papers were in the aisle with the boxes of cake mixes. He replied in carefully measured tones that he’d searched that aisle several times and didn’t see any cupcake papers.

So, the clerk led him to the baking needs aisle and pointed to a round paper cylinder, camouflaged on the bottom shelf, that contained the papers. 

He grabbed the container and on his way to the checkout counter, he spied a container of brown shoe polish that prompted him to remember he needed to spruce up his dress Wellington boots. So, he grabbed the polish and paid for both items at checkout.

Still seething from his wife’s insisting he stop at the grocery store, when he got home, he decided to get even. He left the cupcake papers in the seat of the pickup, and took only the brown shoe polish inside and put the sack on the counter.

His wife looked in the sack and asked tartly, “Where are my cupcake papers?”

He replied, “That’s what you told me to pick up.”

She replied, “How could you possibly mix up my order to buy cupcake papers with brown shoe polish?

He replied, “Well, that’s what I heard.”

With a loud “harrump,” his agitated wife said, “Well, fine. I’ll just drive back to town and buy the papers myself. I’ve got to have them!”

The farmer followed his wife out to the garage and watched as she opened the door and saw her cupcake papers laying in the seat.

She sort of saw the humor in his prank and asked him why it took so long at the grocery store.

He replied, “I didn’t know they came in a Pringles’ can. They didn’t used to be packaged that way.”

I think he still had to polish his boots in the garage that evening.

***

This second story is also about rural shopping. 

A busy farm wife wuz the mother of two rambunctious sons both late elementary school aged. She usually didn’t take them with her shopping, but family circumstances that day required her to take her sons along on the shopping trip.

While in the store, the two ornery boys too frequently were out of sight of their mom, but she wuz still surprised and annoyed at what transpired at the checkout counter.

The store manager approached her and told her that her sons had been caught red-handed in a prank that other customers didn’t appreciate. He told her that the store would not press the matter further, but that she needed to explain to her sons about appropriate and inappropriate in-store behavior.

Well, she chastised her wayward sons roundly when they got to the car and told them they’d have to explain their errant behavior to their father when they got home

And, when they got home, the wife summoned her husband and told him “his sons” had gotten into trouble at the big drug store and they were going to confess their sins to him.

So, he sat his boys down and said, “Tell me what you did to get into trouble.”

His ornery sons told him that they’d discovered the display of condoms in the store and had lifted some packages — and then, and then, and then (suspense) — carefully dropped them into other customers’ shopping carts.

Their dad with a straight face told his boys, “How did you decide who needed them?”

I think from that story that the boys might have inherited their orneriness from dear ol’ Dad.
***

Words of wisdom for the week: “The secret to a long and happy life is drinking beer, wine and whiskey in moderation and avoiding conversations with idiots.”

Have a good ‘un.