The real keeper of all your secrets

I've been feeling a bit poorly the past couple of days. Zeke had a little virus about a week and a half ago involving intestinal problems, sinus issues and coughing, and he somehow managed to give Jason and me half of his disorders each -- meaning Jason got the intestinal stuff, and I've been coughing and sneezing and stuffed up.

Saturday evening all I wanted to eat was soup. I had a sandwich earlier in the day on the way back from Shark's Cove, and my throat was so sore that it was really painful to swallow even something as mild as egg salad.

So I went to the market and ended up going a little nuts.

I showed up at the checkout line with no less than 12 different kinds of soup. Matzo ball, lentil, split pea, tuscan bean, tomato basil, you name it. I loaded it all onto the belt and waited for the checkout lady to ring me up. She looked at my soup menagerie, gave me a puzzled look, shrugged, and told me my total.

It made me chuckle, and reminded me of all the times I showed up at a checkout line thinking to myself, "I'm basically broadcasting everything going on in my life with these purchases."

I mean, think about it. Buying condoms or KY or something? Checkout lady knows you're getting laid, or at least hoping to. Tampons? Laxatives? Diarrhea medicine? 'Nuff said. Your most intimate interactions aren't necessarily with your best friend or sibling or spouse. It's with the clerk at your local drugstore.

I once went to Safeway at 3 in the morning when I was 6 months pregnant with Zeke. Hemorrhoid cream and Pepcid AC. The checkout lady looked at me sympathetically and said, "Honey, I feel your pain."

When I was first pregnant, I was an obsessive pee-er on sticks. Meaning I was so incredulous that I was actually pregnant that I kept taking pregnancy test after pregnancy test just to assure myself that it was real. My friend Michele, who was my OB in Atlanta, told me that the record was held by one of her patients, who took 9 or 10 pregnancy tests.

"Pshaw," I said. "Child's play. I've got that beat by at least 5 or 6."

Because a couple of days before, I showed up at the checkout at my local CVS with over $50 worth of pregnancy test sticks. The guy looked at my purchases and said, "Whatever result you get, I hope it's what you want."

But the best story belongs to my friend Kathleen. Early in one of her pregnancies, before she was really sure, she went to the store and loaded up the conveyor belt with bags of frozen tater tots, frozen french fries, baking potatoes, and a pregnancy test.

The checkout lady ran potatoes, potatoes and more potatoes over the scanner. When she got to the pregnancy test, she looked at Kathleen and said, "I don't think you need this."