I Hate Plastic Grocery Bags … and Thieves, Too

Plastic is a great thing. Don’t get me wrong. But those flimsy, practically transparent things that most groceries use instead of the nice, sturdy brown paper bags, well, I hate them. With a passion. And last night only proved my point.

When I got home from church last night, I brought in some bottles of juice that I had bought at the market on the way to church. As I lifted them out of the flimsy plastic bag, I thought how nice it would be to collapse into bed in five minutes. Then I set the last bottle on the counter and —- there’s no way on earth to replicate in words the sound that bottle made — kkkkkkkkk … thwop! … spatter spatter spatter. Twenty-four ounces of pomegranate juice all over me, the counter, the canisters and cutting boards, the refrigerator, the dishwasher, and the floor. It took me 45 minutes to clean it up. And now I have a pink counter, pink floor, and pink spotted cabinet. (Pomegranate juice stains. Permanently.)

The bottle broke because the sacker put two glass bottles, lying on their sides,  in one plastic bag without wrapping them or in any way protecting them from banging into each other. Now, common sense would tell you that glass, being breakable, should be protected from banging about in grocery bags. If it’s going into a bag with other glass items, it should be wrapped in something to keep the bottles from breaking. At the liquor store, they put all your bottles in nice individual bags before putting them in a carry-all. Come to think of it, when I went through checker training at Kroger in the late ’80s, they told us never to put glass bottles in bags by themselves. Always wrap them in another brown bag, they told us. (That was before plastic bags came along.) In any case, I am taking the exploded bottle back to the store tonight to get my money back. Pomegranate juice is not cheap—that was $8 all over the floor.

So, after all that mess and unpleasantness last night, I go into the kitchen this morning to make breakfast, open the back-door blinds, and notice that the utility shed is open. I turn around to call the kids to fuss at them for leaving the shed unlocked and open all night, only to realise that we weren’t home last night for them to leave it open. So I turn around with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach and lean around until I can see inside. I can’t see the lawnmower handle. I walk out the back door in my pajamas to see if it’s really gone. It is. My brand new, only used once lawnmower. Gone. And the handle to my shed door, through which the lock was fitted, has been wrenched off and is dangling, with the lock still firmly locked,  from the other handle. I call the cops and they come out and take a report, but how are they ever going to catch the guy? The mower was so new, I had used it only on the day I got it to make sure it worked (unlike the previous new one that it replaced), and then I locked it in the shed. I didn’t even have a chance to copy down the serial number. The policeman says that, as my gate was still locked, they probably hoisted it over the fence on the south side of the house, which is a vacant rental property. He also says that they probably saw the box it came in when I threw it out with the trash last week.

So that’s three lessons learned.

1. Do not trust a lock affixed to a vinyl door handle.
2. Copy down your serial numbers before you even take the thing out of the box.
3. Do not throw your garbage away at your own house—take it somewhere else.

Tags: challenges, lawnmower, robbery, theft