I simply can’t be trusted to do the shopping. I invariably get at least one item wrong. 

Let me explain: I am dyslexic. I am able to compensate for this most of the time and many people are surprised to learn this because I am well educated and an avid reader and quick with words. 

Every once in a while it rears it’s ugly head and I will glean the opposite meaning from a sentence or I’ll skip a line of music I am reading or I’ll write a b as a d, etc. this occurs mostly when fatigued or if I am in the throes of a Migraine. 

Back to shopping….. 

The worst place is the pharmacy, although all big box stores are a challenge. This will be hard to write without using the word “fucking” as an adjective before every fucking item in the whole fucking store not to mention the fucking piped in music and the use of different fucking names for the same fucking thing.

I am tired of writing “fucking” just assume it is in front of each proper noun that follows. 

Try buying toothpaste for someone else. My wife likes toothpaste with no whitener. Just plain toothpaste. It is usually hidden on the bottom shelf which is so convenient for a 6 foot tall man. It is far from the pimped up glitterati in the wall of toothpaste above it. I am guessing that there must be eighty to a hundred products in flashy packaging and different formats and sizes and brand names. Maybe 20 of these have a red tag in front indicating a sale of some sort with an arbitrary reduction from another arbitrary sticker price. Flavour is another option. Spearmint, peppermint, just mint, clean mint, fresh mint, regular, original, new, new original and on and on…. This is a nightmare for a dyslexic. In Quebec this is also compounded further by bilingual packaging and the price using different (English smaller by law) fonts. I hope you are still injecting my favourite adjective.

Let’s say that Pharmaprix doesn’t have what I am looking for, my neighbourhood has several alternatives within easy walking distance (in opposite directions. Northward there is Jean Coutu and southward a Jean Coutu and a Uniprix opposite arch other all on the same busy boulevard. Each store layout is almost the same, but usually there is at least one quirky difference. This difference usually involves the product I am looking for. Painkillers for example are so ridiculously separated. There are cold and sinus type painkillers and there are the regular and extra strength. Back pain, headache, muscular pain, etc. The really good stuff is behind the counter and some needs prescription. There are brand names to contend with and the generic equivalent. Some people swear by the brand name (costlier) and say the generic is not as effective. I say it is all a scam. When I was a kid my mum had Aspirin. She switched to A.S.A at some point which is one of those immediately forgettable meaningless acronyms that are anathema to dyslexics. The good stuff was 222. Fucked if I care what 222 stood for. Those babies worked on migraines.

While still at the pharmacy try the hair product section…..nightmare. I simply won’t buy for someone else. It’s like Where’s Waldo for masochists. 

Needless to say, Pharmacies are not my favourite place. Soviet Russia is preferable. One product you line up for I can get behind…..

Groceries are also a pain in the ass. Let’s pick a product like yogurt. 1%,2%,full fat, Greek style, whipped, fruit on the bottom, natural, organic, I am sure I am only scratching the surface and I am not going to research it completely which would involve doing the very thing I want to avoid. While in the dairy section, different formats for milk. Skim is not even milk. Compound this with almond milk and oat milk and canary milk etc. ‘Full fat, Greek style, whipped, fruit on the bottom’ sounds kinda sexy put together like that…

I am getting tired of writing, so, you, the reader (if still here) must be as well. 

Last week I needed to get black ink for our printer. Great. I went to Bureau en Gros (Staples) and upon entering an enthusiastic young man asked if he could help me. I disappointed him by saying I knew exactly what I needed and pointed to the wall of cartridges half a kilometre away. I went to the wall… HP65 black (good for hp envy 7000 series). I checked. Not my first rodeo. In and out in 5 minutes. Smug.

Sharon put the cartridge in, and it didn’t work. She put the spent one back in, didn’t work. She turned the machine off, same result. If there were tires, she would have kicked them. I was called, and I went into ‘hp help’ etc. and found a YouTube video and unplugged for 20 minutes and tried again. I tried to get hp on the phone but I forgot my password. After dealing with the password I found that my warrantee for free help was expired so I googled “life expectancy of printers” and realized that maybe it was time for a new one. I googled my model and Lo and behold there was one left at the same store I get my cartridges. This happened to be Boxing Day and it was on sale for the cost of several cartridges. O happy day!

I went to the store expecting to buy the same model thinking ‘I already have a full cartridge’ and they were offering 3 months of “free” ink. When I finally found a ‘clerk’ (dr. Livingstone, I presume?) he was a spiritless drudge who checked to see if the model was in stock. Turned out that the display model was it. I checked inside to make sure that the cartridges were still the same. The cartridge was staring at me with its name “hp64”. I left drudge boy behind and got an hp64 black  off the wall. Brought it home and our printer works again.  

I simply can’t be trusted to do the shopping