We need a check on sanity in aisle 7....

I've often wondered, when I'm out buying groceries, how much people take notice of what's in my cart. Don't you? Like the time I walked through the line at Wal-Mart with a bag of potato chips, king-sized M&Ms, and a Diet Coke. Throw in a box of tampons and a gun from the sporting goods section and the woman checking me out probably would have put security on high alert.

If she was paying attention.

I'm most proud of myself on the days when it seems like all I'm buying are fruits, vegetables, and healthy protein. I'm dying to run into every person I know so that they can see what an amazing mother I am.

That never seems to happen.

I usually see my entire neighborhood when my kids have run out of all the"treats" they like and my cart contains every piece of red-dye-enriched-high-fructose-corn-syruped junk I can get my hands on.

I sometimes feel like being widowed makes you hypersensitive to what's in your cart...so to speak. We're constantly wondering what everyone is thinking about us. How we're doing. How we're coping. How it's possible we don't know notice how bad we smell because we've given up on showering.

But there is a philosophy that I have to constantly remind myself of, lest I become too preoccupied with what people think.

No one is thinking about it.

I don't mean that in a bad way. But like the checker at the grocery store, they have too much on their minds to worry about what's in your cart. We all, frankly, think we're more important than we actually are. We think that every move we make has made an irreversible lasting impression on every person we meet. When, in reality, like the checker at Wal-Mart, pretty much everyone we know has much more on their minds than the junk we just put on their conveyor belt.

This does not give you permission to go out and do whatever you want because no one will notice. I mean, you still have to be a little self-aware. Or, to use my analogy, don't be the person who leaves the raw chicken juice on the belt.

But let the little stuff go. Because most of the people you know are too preoccupied with their own potato chips and tampons to really notice the nutty stuff you've got going on.


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© Catherine Tidd 2010