Friday Freewrite; Prompt: Grocery List
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In Ireland, strangely enough, we refer to going to the shops with the grocery list as doing the messages. I’ve no idea why this is, but I do recall that in our house doing the messages was no one’s favourite chore. Why? Because the list included no specification as to number or quantity and, questions were not permitted.
My father would choose one or two of us to go declaring ‘I’m looking for two volunteers, you and you’ and woe betide you if you dared to ask how many carrots or how many bottles of minerals. ’Never get less than six’ or ‘I’m trying to teach you to think’ would be my father’s impatient retort, with a snap of his newspaper indicating that the audience had ended. And as we set forth pondering the imponderability of adults, a parting command would often issue in our wake not to forget the yokes or the scabobblehead.
Halcyon days!
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Posted as a response to the Day 141: 5 Minute Freewrite: Friday - Prompt: grocery list which you can see here:
https://steemit.com/freewrite/@mariannewest/day-141-5-minute-freewrite-friday-prompt-grocery-list
Image is my own
Luxury! I never got to do the messages when I was young as we lived in the sticks. It was over a mile to the nearest shop - that's if you could call it a shop. It was really Mary Gibson's front room. She had quite a slow turnover of goods, in the early 1980s I remember tin cans covered in rust and prices still marked in the pre 1972 Pounds, Shillings and Pence pre decimal notation. Imagine 8 year old Shredded Wheat. Luckily for her, but not her customers best before dates were yet to be invented...
A mile to Mary Gibson's front room, ouch! I take it all back. Life with 26 food emporia within 100 metres perhaps wasn't so bad after all.
As for best before dates; we didn't need dates in the old days to tell us if something was off. Food actually rotted , went bad, decomposed, smelled. These days not even mould can live on our food.
I think that it was a good idea to not put the amount.. I liked the way your dad was choosing the "volunteers" ;-)
The Old Steemian’s Home everyone is under the attack of infamous masonic Port-a-potties. They have been sent from their lord, the evil Hairy Potty, to destroy the creativity of this community! Will you help the Home to resist the siege and fight back? Here are our weapons!
I did once try to show him the definition of volunteer in the dictionary.....but that's another story.
Cheers for the prompt.
LOL!
I love that phrase, doing the messages. Shopping someone else's list is never as fun for me anyway. Fortunately, I can ask questions. Often, too many.
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I would swear a part of your message disappeared before my very eyes .......I fear I am hallucinating.
I saw @f3nix had already delivered the prompt. So I edited the comment. Or...did I? Bwahahahaha!
Hahaha, I see what you did there.......or do I?
Are you kidding me? You live in Ireland? Really? I had no idea when I wrote you into my story. That sure is freaky! : ) Doing the messages sounds like fun until you know what the real meaning of that is. It is nice that you remember those teaching days as fond ones. : )
Hahaha, you really didn't know? You mean I got the part on artistic merit? Wow, I'm contemplating a career change!
No, I really didn't know! Artistic merit alone...you go girl! : )
Sometimes it's not easy to keep the parents happy! Well done 😁
Cheers for reading. I remember as kids we used to have a theory that when people reached about 25 they went completely insane.