Analysis of Shopper’s Selections Goes to the Dogs

My innocent attempt to analyze the implications of a three-item shopping list (carrots, dog biscuits, gin) given to a husband by his wife have brought down all sorts of imprecations on me.

Not the least painful is the accusation that I am a male chauvinist (a term planted in the language by the feminists, against etymological reason). Anne Taylor of Venice writes:

“I deplore your male chauvinism. . . . The guy who sent you the shopping list may or may not share guilt, but you for some reason assume that his wife or your wife (and other wives) wouldn’t see the humor in his wife’s list.”

Evidently Ms. Taylor refers to my decision not to mention the man’s name, since its publication might expose his wife to ridicule and embarrassment.

I did not mean to suggest that the wife might lack a sense of humor, but only that she might not be amused by some of the implications I drew from her list.

For example, it was hard to avoid the conclusion that either she, her husband or her dog drank gin, and probably too much. But I remind Ms. Taylor that, as I said, chivalry forced me to clear the wife of that allegation. (I suppose, however, that chivalry itself is an act of male chauvinism.)

On the contrary, another reader, Eugenia Clark Peterson of Oceanside, found that my speculations cleared me of the male chauvinism she had previously thought me guilty of. She explains that she, not getting my point, asked her husband, Pete, formerly San Diego’s senior psychiatrist, for his opinion of the strange list.

“His judgment wasn’t as kind as yours in analyzing the characters of the individuals involved in the riddle: carrots, dog biscuits, gin.

“ ‘Oh, that’s easy,’ he answered. ‘The wife loves her dog and her gin. She threw the carrots in to justify the shopping list.’

“Possibly that was your private opinion, which you gallantly declined to express. If so, this instance compensates, in part, for others in which I felt compelled to label you a male chauvinist. “

Richard L. Black of Torrance observes that the husband should have been pleased by the list, since it obviously included all his wife’s pets: the carrots for her parakeets, the biscuits for her dog, and the gin for him.

Lucile S. Thomas suggests that the carrots might have been for the dog, recalling that her mother-in-law had a Scotty that drooled for carrots. Also, she said, she knew a family whose mongrel loved to drink gin from a bowl.

Ann Cordes Lynch of Tarzana writes that a day or two after reading that column she was looking through some of her parents’ mementoes and discovered this shopping list: gin, muffins.

“When I saw it I burst out laughing, then shed some tears. I guess I saved it because it was so typical of my dad. He did enjoy his gin (made with a drop of Vermouth and an olive) though he watered it down as he got older.”

Most readers, however, took me to task for my reflection that the only purpose of gin was to get one intoxicated as fast as possible. “I do not know of one (recipe) that requires gin.”

I am now up to my garters in recipes that require gin. Most of them sound absolutely inedible. It seems to me that the gin would boil away and would leave nothing but a faint taste of the juniper berry.

Most of the recipes are too long to publish here. Besides, I feel obliged to spare any readers who might be imprudent enough to try one. Just the titles may suggest the appalling possibilities: Cream of tomato soup with gin, chicken martini (honest); shrimp with gin; leg of lamb with gin, and (yes) vanilla ice cream with gin and blueberries.

The danger in attempting this sort of psychological analysis from a shopping list is attested to by Patti Deutsch Rogg. She explains that when she and her husband shop they avoid checkout-line boredom by trying to analyze the shopper ahead of them from the contents of the shopper’s basket.

“This particular form of amusement came to a halt . . . when the man in line ahead of us placed his three items on the checkout counter: one tin of cat food, one half-gallon bottle of vodka, and an ax.”

Well, anyway, his cat probably survived.