The worst thing about moving is learning your way around a new grocery store. When I couldn’t locate one of my favorite snacks, I decided to inquire at the check out.

Right away a voice inside my head wheedled, you might want to think this through a bit more, dear; this could be embarrassing.

I’m 30 years old, I argued, I can certainly ask for a product in a grocery store.

At the check out, a slim young woman whose name badge read “Clarista” began checking out my groceries. Leaning over the package of Ding-Dongs crossing her scanner I asked, “Do you carry Skinny Munchies?”

“Skinny what?” she replied.

“Skinny Munchies,” I repeated, lowering my eyes. “They’re a Weight Watcher product, uh, little chips that are legal to snack on…”

“Oh, that’s the cutest thing I’ve ever heard!” Clarista grinned, reaching for the large microphone stretched across her cash register. “Mr. Sidensticker,” she called, “do we sell something called Skinny Munchies?”

Mr. Sidensticker, in the customer service booth one aisle away, answered into his microphone, “Skinny what?”

“Skinny Munchies,” she giggled, ignoring my pleas to ‘never mind.’ “She says they’re for Weight Watchers. Isn’t that cute?”

“Never heard of ‘em,” Mr. Sidensticker boomed back. “Do they work?”

“I don’t know,” Clarista turned to me. “Do they work?”

“Uh, I guess, I don’t know, uh, they weren’t for me…” I mumbled, sucking in my stomach and pitching my Cini-Minis down the conveyer belt.

“Well, who were they for?” Clarista snapped her gum.

“Oh, my daughter, uh, she’s over there,” I replied, spotting a thin child of eight or nine browsing the gum machines. “She just loves those things. Can’t get enough of them,” I stammered. “Well, we’ll just have to find them somewhere else.”

Scrawling out some amount on a check and tossing it across the counter, I pushed my basket towards the double-sized exit doors.

“Come on, honey, we gotta go now,” I called over my shoulder.

“Huh,” the girl replied, “who are you? Wait,” she cried as I grabbed her arm, “you’re not my mommy!”

It was then I realized that not knowing your way around a new grocery store isn’t the worst things about moving. Calling your husband to tell him you’ve been arrested is.

Fortunately, the police officer who responded to the call was a bit on the heavily blessed side, too, and believed everything I blubbered out to her. She let me go. But not before my Bomb Pops melted down the side of her patrol car.

I will have to find a new place to shop.