Why My Daughter Doesn't Like to Shop With Me

I was at Kroger with Sammi 2 weeks ago. Early menopausal mind enter stage right:  We're in the meat aisle looking at ground turkey. You know how they have them in the styrofoam with the shrunken plastic on top? The one I picked up was kind of hooved up in the middle, so I looked at it to check the date. Meanwhile, a woman leaned in between Sam and me and grabbed some too. Here is where my mind when haywire. I looked at the date and it was something like "June 3". I gasped. I said , "Oh my gosh! This expires on June 3rd!" The woman looks slightly alarmed and peers at her meat. I grab her arm and look at her meat too...it expires June 3rd...I promptly snatch the package of meat out of her hands and put it back in the case, exclaiming loudly "Can they do this? Isn't it illegal to sell expired meat??" I look at Sam incredulously, she is just kind of staring at me with questioning eyes and slightly parted lips. (She told me later that at the moment I looked at her she was actually thinking, "What the crap is wrong with her? What is she babbling about??") Well, needless to say I was horrified at the lack of attention by Kroger's meat department. I am now on a mission to find ALL meat that has expired. I start going down the aisle, pointing at any and all packaged meat and loudly condemning it. "June 4th! June 6th! June 8th!" I felt like Oprah when she would point to the audience and yell "YOU win a car! YOU win a car"! Then I would snap my head around towards Sam and the woman and say yet again, "Can they do this?? Isn't this illegal?" Suddenly, God had mercy. A random thought flitted through my crowded mind..."Have we been through June yet? What month is this? OH MY GOSH, this is May 31st" I look at the woman (who has figured it out on her own and has retrieved her beloved meat) and say "I am so stupid! It isn't even June yet!" I laugh, the woman doesn't even smile. I say "I guess I can go ahead and buy this meat now" with an embarrassed chuckle. The woman never says a word. I grab the meat and thrust it in the cart that is being quickly pushed away from the scene by Sammi. I'm mortified, yet my daughter is leaving me. Marooned without even a cart to deflect attention from myself. I have no idea what to do with my hands. So I start following her yelling, "Sam! Sammi!" She never stops, never answers...she is just shaking her head no and leaning over the cart in a suspicious manner..almost like she is silently laughing so hard that she can't straighten up. To cover the fact that my firstborn won't answer me I just say "I'm going to get some hotdogs!" She pauses but doesn't look at me. As I am looking for hotdogs I see peripherally that "the woman" is coming up to look at the hotdogs too. Curse you woman! Now I'm sweating and in a frenzy to grab some hotdogs and get the heck away from her. I grab a package and I KID YOU NOT, they were open and hotdog juice is running all down my arm. Because of my previous encounter with meat products and this humorless woman, I cannot turn around like I want, to say "OH my gosh! Can you believe this? The package was OPEN!" So, I just shove them back in place and scurry off. That is was happened to me at Kroger. Sammi told me on the way home that I needed to stop panicking over everything and trying to panic everyone around me until I am sure that my panic is real. Point taken.