Am I Considered "Anal Retentive" IF...

Things I Spend Time Thinking About All Day


All I want to know is, does anyone but me manage to write down their grocery list in the order in which they generally encounter the goods they wish to purchase, IN ORDER, from MEMORY, based on the layout of the isles in their favorite Grocery Store?

Problem for me is, Kroger has a "Regular Kroger" a mile or two down Kingston Pike from us in one direction, and in the other direction a little ways there's one of their new "Kroger Marketplaces" which...if you haven't seen one, sells stuff like furniture and other home decorating goods along with fighter aircraft and Electrical Power Co-generation Systems and nuclear weapons produced by the Pakistanis and Iranians.

...OK...I made the part about the aircraft and Co-generation and Atomic stuff up...but still...

Then I'm not even going to get into what happens when I make the occasional trip to a Food World doing my shopping or any other purveyor of Foodstuffs from other lands and planets.

I think that while our Congress is busy forcing me next year to go see Dr. Rashee, the local medical practitioner who attended medical school for twenty years at DeVry Institute or Phoenix University while also working as the pool boy/Gigolo at the local country club about my erectile dysfunction, that they could take the time to pass a few laws that will do all of us "Seniors" and "Seniors in Waiting" some good in our lives.

Why not pass a law that says that every single Grocery Store in the United By-God States of 'Merrica shall have exactly the same layout when it comes to finding Beer or Vegetables or Bologna or Baby Food or Feminine Hygiene products?

Is that too much to ask?

If I want to go on an "adventure" I'll go on vacation and hike my way to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro in Africa in a "Hover round", or wade the Everglades in a Speedo towing a shopping cart full of dead chickens, or attend a NASCAR race and camp in the infield of the track in an old School bus flying a giant Confederate Flag with a bunch of people who's favorite cheer is "WhooooooHoooo..."

That way I can avoid walking down the isles looking for Asian Hoisine Sauce wasting time only managing to find stuff with Gerber and Massengale on the label.

And while we're talkin''...friend to friend...another thing's bothering me.

Why the heck doesn't the state or federal government...those same bodies responsible for crap like the FCC and the FAA and the E-I-E-I-O and whatever (wait...Old McDonald still handles the E-I-E-I-O part of our government I think...) make every cable company in the continental US--including the satellite companies--do this simple little thing for old men with "remote control amnesia"?

STANDARDIZE THE FREAKING CABLE CHANNELS!!

Is that too much to ask?

Wouldn't it be incredibly simple for everything from... say channel 1 to channel number 69 (or whatever the highest VHF channel is) be actually NUMBERED in each city or cable jurisdiction in the same manner?

Forget having channel #2 be channel #4 and channel number #5 be channel 11, let me poke a button or series of buttons with my thumb and whatever fingers I don't have stuck in some bodily orifice or using to scratch something that's itching and get the results I expect.

Then with these new "digital TV's" and remotes that can access every number ranging from negative to positive infinity, logically place all of the stupid tear jerking Women's channels in a group, and the jock strap sniffing sports freaks sports channels in a group, all of the info nerds stuff and all of the home improvement stuff and everything else in channel groupings so those of us growing ever longer in tooth and shorter in memory can find something while we're up sitting on the toilet watching TV in the restroom reflected off the mirror of some strange motel in a foreign city trying to get over last night's Mexican dinner indiscretions.

I swear to God I can't tell you where anything but Fox News and the weather channel and possibly Food Network is here on my own TV in my own home after living here for nearly TWO YEARS.

But I can go to the Grocery store at Kroger tomorrow, and unless they have remodeled it since last Thursday or Friday, I can buy some stuff which will allow me to cook Asian Baby Back Ribs (already have the ribs) and some spicy Asparagus and some other as yet to be identified side dish and then watch something weird on TV--I don't care what because I can only solve one problem in any given day.

And I'm a bigger man for admitting that problem in the first place, don't you think?

That will be all...for now...