I have been working diligently at reducing my weekly trips to the grocery store and have managed to bring it down from seven times a week to just one but not without a lot of planning, list making, editing, van re-org, allowing myself the occasional wow-factor surprise, bonus item.

Sometimes that item is meat I hadn’t planned to buy but was on sale for five minutes only. Sometimes it’s a seasonal item from the house wares section with a malfunctioning off switch.

Two weeks ago, my surprise, unexpected purchase came in the form of a pair of Joe Fresh winter gloves.

When I returned home with many, many grocery bags, two kids, a violin and a steeped tea with two milk, I quickly unloaded not thinking at all about my new $8 gloves that would likely be placed in my glove box (I just got that) as emergency, gas pumping gloves or I would keep them special to be used only for driving to and from the grocery store.

I thought about the butternut squash soup and fresh bread I was going to make for dinner. I thought about the fresh muffins I was going to bake later that day using one or two of the three quarts of raspberries that were on sale 3 for $5. I thought about the next night’s dinner and what meat to freeze, how to stack my six bags of milk and where in God’s name was I going to fit all of this yogurt in an already jammed fridge? At no time did I think about the gloves.

I didn’t think about my Joe Fresh gloves until the following week when I reminded myself it had been a full seven days since I visited the grocery store and gave myself a pat on the back.

My bill was growing to upwards of $300 and I watched as one girl bagged my items as the other scanned and typed in codes on the screen. Chloe sang “twinkle twinkle” and tried to swipe at the loose change in the drop box hanging from the counter. Then it happened. I ran out of bags and the girl asked if I wanted to buy a couple of plastic ones. Before I could say yes, the bagger girl dug around in one of my cloth bags and said, “Wait, I found another bag.” As I watched her fish around in the bottom of the cloth bag, I smiled at Chloe, thankful I wouldn’t have to buy plastic and that once again, we had planned our packing perfectly. Instead of a bag, she pulled out my gloves and handed them to the cashier.

The cashier waved the gloves in my face in an accusatory fan-like motion as both bagger and tiller had decided I was attempting to steal them. The gloves I already owned and had forgotten to remove from my bags the week prior. I guess because the $600 violin was more important than the $8 gloves that just so happened to be the same shade of black as my cloth bags and about the same thickness—hence the $8 price tag.

I explained that I had bought the gloves a week earlier, I discussed my efforts to cut my trips to the grocery store down to just once weekly and also that a couple of months ago, I had done something similar where I left an avocado (also blackish green) in the bottom of one of my bags and a bagger pulled it out, all mushy and rotten at the bottom, though, that time they laughed because it had obviously not been purchased recently but the gloves? No expiry, no date stamp, no visible markings, tags still affixed. I guess I looked like a person willing to spend $300 on meat and cheese but would risk it all to save $8 on gloves. Never has there been a bigger black glove scandal since O.J.’s trial.

I just ran toward the exit shouting, “Winona Forever!”