Friday, September 26, 2008

Adventures in parenting

So the Bear has a yeast infection and I got nominated to go to Walgreen's to get her some medicine. Apparently buying an antifungal medicine for your daughter is akin to buying her a box of femine hygene products-in other words, not something daddies do. So there I was, 8 at night staring at the Monostat and Vagisil and not seeing what it was the nurse line suggested. I finally sucked it up and asked the pharmacy tech where I could find Lotramin AF. He pointed me toward the foot powder aisle. Yeah, that's right, the foot powder aisle. Unlike my assumption that Lotramin would be something like the adult drugs for a yeast infection and therefore housed with them, Lotramin is used for athlete's foot and jock itch.

A little dazed and weirded out by the jock itch medicine for my 18 month old child in my hand, I wandered past the ice cream aisle. I remembered that Walgreens is the only place that carries our favorite flavor of Ben and Jerry's (Triple Caramel Chunk, seriously, I could mainline it) so I grabbed that, too.

As I was leaving the store with my little bag and contemplating the weird look the check out clerk gave me, it dawned on me that I had just purchased a tube of jock itch ointment and a pint of ice cream. Wow. Probably not a combo that clerk sees often. It reminds me of my most favorite grocery order that I ever rang up while working at the MPFC: a box of condoms, a can of spray starch, and a cucumber. I didn't even ask him if he wanted paper or plastic, just dropped the items carefully in to the bag and let him go on his way. I think I did tell him, as my Wally's clerk told me, "Have a great night," and all with a straight face.