Shopping with the pops!

If you don't know my father, which most of you don't, let me explain a little about him. He has just turned 60 years old and, amazing enough, still acts like he's 20! He served our country in the Vietnam war and came back twice; once with a bullet wound to the foot and the second time with shrapnel in his hip. Unfortunately, the latter wounding left him with a quite a bit of chronic pain and a slight limp. He is a funny little man. (I get my vertically challengedness from my father.) For those of you who know me and have seen my Cabbage Patch cheeks, they come from my father. He has them too, although his are a little droopier these days!(ha! Love you dad!) I mess with him and call him an oldfart and I really don't mean it, until I shop with him. Shopping with my father is quite the experience. It starts with the drive to the grocery store. I've lived in this town my entire life, and although I've had a few incidents of getting lost in this town recently, I know how to get to Winn Dixie! He must be repressing the 18 years that I lived here because he starts giving me directions on how to get there. He makes several comments on my ability to drive and says that I am going too fast and that it scares him. I give him partial credit on this matter because I was speeding, in spite of my recent ticket. I was doing 48 in a 45! Speeding, yes, scary driving, NO! (This from the man who once put a Porsche engine in a Voltswagon Bus so that it would go faster!) So we arrive at the Winn Dixie, FINALLY! Our first stop is the produce section. Every grocery shopping experience with my dad involves complaining about the prices! Except this time, I agree! I mention several times that we could get back in the car and drive to another, lower priced grocery store, but he refuses. We roam among the produce and are equally appalled at the price of bell peppers. Finally, we select the produce that we are willing to pay for and head down the regular aisles. And it begins...if there is a sale my dad feels the need to purchase it. It actually started with the cucumbers back in the produce section, they are three for a dollar. We have no need for three cucumbers, but because the sign said three for a dollar, he says we must get three! So, the whole time we are shopping I'm having to remind him that just because it is on sale doesn't mean we need it! There is another thing that my dad does while shopping that I just don't understand. For some odd reason he goes up and down every aisle! Today I said to him, as we headed down the baking goods aisle,"Dad, do you need any baking goods?" He said he didn't and when I asked him why we went up and down aisles that shelve items we don't need, he just said that it was part of his routine! Aaaggghhh! So, we finish the routine of shopping and finally get to the checkout. Wouldn't you know the sales weren't ringing up correctly and the clerk had to void everything and start over. I bagged our stuff and, after he paid the extremely high priced total, we headed out the door. The clencher of it all...my father looks at me and says, "we should have gone to Food World!" Hmmm....why didn't I think of that????? Oh how I love that crazy man!