About twice a year, I pop into Canadian Tire because Greg calls to say, “Hey, are you near a Canadian Tire?” and by then I’ve already answered the phone.

Are you ever that far from Canadian Tire?

Despite Canadian being right in the name, I feel like an absolute outsider walking in there.

For starters, there is always some baffling product right at the entrance on display that has no business in a store predominantly known for automotive equipment.

Today, it was sugar.

I bought some because I was so perplexed as to why it was there, I thought maybe there was some sort of lucky winner thing and walked into the automotive section carrying it like a baby.

Greg had asked me to pick up some fuel stabilizer.

Okay, but before I do, I drilled him with a series of questions, “What am I using it for?” “What does it look like in the aisle?” “How big is the bottle?” so when I couldn’t find it myself, no sales rep would be able to stump me with their tricky questions.

Greg told me just say, “small engine,” and “it’s a clear bottle with red liquid, you can’t miss it.”

Why does he say things like that? He’s just setting me up to fail.

“Oh and pick up some toilet shims.”

Sure, just in the shim aisle?

I waited in the automotive line after roaming aisle after aisle, a sea of nothing but clear bottles with red liquid, eating my bag of sugar with a tiny shovel from seasonal and leaving small traces of it behind my cart so the staff could find me after dark.

The woman in front of me was conferring with the mechanic, picking up her car after a routine oil change.

The mechanic started saying something like, “It would have been $39 for the oil change but the bill is going to be more like $1200 because we found a family of gerbils nesting in the underbelly of the vehicle and had to call in an exterminator to humanely smoke them out.” They didn’t call her because they knew anyone with a heart would say, “Sure, go ahead, that sounds reasonable.”

Or something like that, I may have been daydreaming/high from the sugar.

I asked the kind gentleman in the spiffy red tee if he could point me in the direction of the fuel stabilizer.

CT Guy: What are you going to….

Me: Small engine! (nailed it!)

CTG: Okay, do you know what kind of small engine?

Me: Um, a hair dryer?

Who couldn’t use some stabilizer in their hair dryer?

Within five seconds of my Mom reading this post I will have an email asking if I know where my water shut-off valve is.