Found Friday: The Grocery List - The diary of a family

Look at these abandoned grocery lists. There is much detail about a couple of families here. And many questions. The white one is a scrap of slick paper, not your typical scratch paper. Not a post-it note, not a notebook page. It is not writing paper at all. You know when you remove the top from a box of chocolates, or something else that might smear, there is a sheet of slick paper laying over the contents. This is that kind of paper: A lid liner. But it is not square; the bottom edge has been scissored off, not quite parallel to the top edge. The left edge is not a straight line. It is a scrap, a corner of a larger sheet. Now look at the writing. There are careful loops in the h, l, y and k. Neat, all legible. Perhaps a woman’s hand, but that is only perhaps. The entire list seems to have been made by one person but probably not all at once. There are at least three different amendments, additions to the list. It began with four items for the fishing tackle. Note these four items are underlined. Next, in the lower half of the sheet, slightly indented, five grocery items were added: cookies, mac & ch, evap. milk, tomato sauce and cheese. Then with no room left at the bottom, bread is added on the right. Now up in the right corner, a small list for a different person: “Bra 40C?” (Note the big capital B and the question mark.) Then there is candy, and finally, eye liner. Three groups of items. Fishing tackle, food and some personal stuff. One item in each group is not crossed off. The list is in black ball point ink, crossed off in blue. Except for “candy”. Candy is written in same blue ink as used to cross off the other items. Was this the last item added? Was it an afterthought while shopping? Do you know something about this family? The other sheet is less telling. It is a lavender post-it note. The color choice is perhaps feminine or perhaps it was random. Three pens were used. Someone with a green pen, about to run out of ink starts the list with headbands and bacon. A second person using a fiberpoint pen with dark blue ink adds whip crean (2) and juice boxes. The second person again, using a blue ball-point this time, adds Spag. O’s and lunch. The first person is probably a young girl. The cursive is almost like strung together block printing. The second person seems in a hurry: almost scribbling, abbreviating. This is mom. “Whip crean” is probably whipped or whipping cream. “Juice boxes” is written with a runaway S and a rather inventive X. The X is probably a block-print X incorporated into cursive writing. Maybe this person simply doesn’t remember how to make a cursive X. Is the last item, “lunch” a reminder to eat lunch after shopping? Or that the shopping trip is to include lunch? Probably not. More likely the broad term “lunch” is a reminder to pick up some quick items for lunches, probably with the “juice boxes” to be packed-lunches for school or work. Then, “Spag. O’s” is probably for dinner. It’s a family with at least two children, one of them a teen. Mom and dad both work or perhaps, mom is on her own. Not much planning ahead here. Quick fix meals, one day at a time. Except for the whip crean. What do you think?

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