Proof that I've taught my children well

When you have as many kids as I do, you buy a lot of food.

More than however much you're thinking.  I promise.

When said children are playing sports and approaching puberty at the same time, you eventually start to resign yourself to the fact that there must be two trips to the grocery store a week.

Usually I can get away with just hitting up the store the second time each week for produce.  Usually...unless the oldest goes on a bender and decides to eat all the cans of corn and peas in the pantry too.  Seriously, the kid will open a can, grab a spoon and go to town.  The first time I watched him eat a can of cold peas I almost barfed...but then I reasoned that it's not necessarily a bad thing.  I mean, he could be eating crap and he's eating vegetables, just in the grossest way imaginable.

That, and his mother doesn't often buy crap.

Have you seen what happens to a can of Pringles in a house with four kids?  

I should totally buy one sometime and videotape that shit.  It's like a pack of rabid wolves fighting over the first dead animal in Spring.  For serious.

Anyhow, I buy a lot of food.

When I have all the kids with me, I get looks of pity and sympathy from the checkers.  People behind me quickly realize they chose the wrong line and leave when they see the huge pile of stuff.  Someone has to go get another cart. We become a parade by the time we leave the store. All that.

When I have all the kids with me, I usually get some comment from a stranger about how they are all so well behaved.  I smile and say thank you, but I think something more like this in my head: Well, yeah they can behave.  They aren't wild animals, they are children.  And they're store trained.  

When I don't have all the kids with me, store employees ask me all kinds of stupid questions about why I'm buying so much food. Usually, I just nod and mumble something about having a bunch of kids to feed.  Occasionally, I mess with them and just say that I'm really hungry.  Or that I have a tapeworm.  Or that I'm pregnant with octuplets.  Incidentally, it's none of your damn business what I'm buying.  Unless I'm violating some quantity limit for oranges, shut up and just scan the shit.  I know I'm buying six boxes of cereal.

Anyway.

Last weekend, this happened:

Towards the end of the line of groceries, I put 3 dozen eggs, 2 bags of apples and 3 huge bunches of bananas on the little conveyor belt.  (don't worry, I'll be back at the store buying these things again before the weekend)

My daughters were at the end of the check stand, loading the bags into the second cart.

Checker: (looks at daughter #1, smiles) You must really like bananas!

Daughter #1:  Yeah. I love bananas. We are monkeys.

Daughter #2: There are more monkeys at home.

Me: (thinking I am clarifying) I have four total.

Checker: (jaw hits floor, stares at me in disbelief)  You really have four monkeys?????

I should have said yes.

Me: No. No, I don't really have four monkeys.  (shaking head and suppressing the urge to ask her if she was serious)

As we walked out of the store all parade like with our carts of food, daughter #1 looks at me and laughs.

Mom, that lady totally thought we had monkeys.  

Insert maniacal laughter.