Sometimes all you can do is laugh

My grocery store, Frys (which is Kroger in other parts of the country) has senior citizens day on the first Wednesday of every month.

On this day, all senior citizens (55 and older) get 10% off their entire bill. They also put out free coffee and donuts. Now, as much as I love a stale powdered donut, this is not the best day to go grocery shopping. The store is overran with old people all stocking up for the month. This is a true test of patience when shopping with two toddlers because the checkout lines are long - and they are slow.

We are usually the only family at the store on senior citizens day. I think other people avoid this day...the store is crowded and as much as I dont want to make any negative generalizations about old people, at my specific grocery store, they dont seem to be very friendly.

So why do I knowingly grocery shop on senior citizens day? For the 10% discount, of course. The discount comes off when your store savings (VIP) card is swiped - and my birthday year was entered incorrectly when I registered. Whether or not this was done on purpose is irrelevant.

My kids like grocery shopping. They sit in the car attachment of the cart and honk the little squeaky horns. They also like to play the Grocery Store Screaming Game. To play this game, one baby screams. Then, the next baby screams louder. Then they laugh, which makes it almost cute for one second, until the screaming continues.

Look, I am not going to say its not annoying.
It IS annoying.
But they are toddlers and this is what toddlers do. Sometimes I can ask them to be quiet and they listen. Sometimes I give them balloons to distract them. Sometimes I even give them a small piece of cookie in exchange for being quiet.

The screaming game is still better than the fighting game (where Brenna repeatedly pulls Hayden's hair and pokes his eyes) so ultimately, it doesnt bother me.

But it does bother the senior citizens.
I lost count of how many bad looks we got somewhere after 20.

And I find that strange considering most of them cannot hear anyway.

At one point, we are walking down the deoderant isle and this old lady comes up from behind me with a sponge. "Your KID dropped this," she scolded me. Apparently my DD had been reaching for anything in reaching distance.

I look around, surrounded by old people glaring at me, old people music blasting through the store's speakers, my kids screaming at the top of their lungs and now my DD is grabbing all the deoderants off the shelf...and I still have this one old lady growling at me.

What could I do?
Sometimes there is only one thing you can do - laugh.

So I laughed.

And we survived. Until next month.