I don’t know how John does it. He and David usually do the grocery gig, and John regales me with adorable stories of David pushing his own little cart and insisting on having the hot dogs and the yogurt and the cheese all in his cart so it’s so heavy he can barely push. Cute as a button.

So I volunteered to do a run Tuesday. First, David didn’t want to head on over to the vegetables; he wanted to drink his chocolate milk and watch the clam tank. So, then I couldn’t see him over the frozen fish section and had to double back. He insisted on picking out the sushi himself even though I told him he wouldn’t like eel. (I switched when he wasn’t looking.) He demanded the expensive bananas (I held fast), unspooled the plastic bags, lifted every juice container he could touch, which was all of them, and that was the easy part of the trip. Then he refused to push his cart and refused to let me combine, so I was pushing mine, hunched over pulling his and keeping up a constant litany of “We don’t need any cheese today; please don’t touch the chips; I don’t need any bars, thank you; put that back thank you,” which of course lead to me carrying him, pushing one cart, pulling the other, and not finding ibuprofen in a childproof cap.

I pointed out to John that when he gets home I am there to put away the groceries, get lunch on the table, and relieve him of David. When I got home, John was at work.

Today we went to the drugstore, and David was, indeed, cute as a button. He carried the basket up and down the aisles until I put 6 bars of soap in it, and then we carried it together. He had the courtesy to ask if I needed the foot powder even as he was pulling it off the hook and adding it to our basket. I was in a constant state of rehooking. But otherwise, he didn’t break anything, and we both stayed cheery.