Yesterday I performed my Sunday ritual of going to Wal-Mart to stock up on groceries for the week. As I practiced my tips for succeeding as a shopper in a hostile Wally World environment I zoomed down the bread aisle. But before getting to the loaves of bread themselves I stopped at the peanut butter located to my right. I grabbed a medium sized jar of Wal-Mart’s generic Great Value brand. I then walked a few feet and scoured to my left where I picked out my usual Pepperidge Farm Oatmeal bread. I then returned to my cart at the end of the aisle, threw my items inside, and continued the little shopping that I had left to do. I then checked out, walked through the parking lot of hell, and went on with my day.

When I returned home to drop off my groceries I didn’t think twice about conducting a check of my inventory. I rushed to put the items away, making sure the things that needed to go in the fridge or freezer got there but not paying much more attention to anything other than that.

Fast forward about five hours later. It was time for me to perform yet another one of my boring rituals…I am talking about the making of my lunch for the next day. As is well documented I labor for about a minute and a half each night as I slather peanut butter on a piece of bread and put another piece on top of it to make the perfect PB sandwich. Only this time around my routine came to a crashing halt. I opened the fridge to get my fresh loaf of bread (yes, I keep my bread in the fridge) but much to my surprise there was no bread to be found. Thinking I might have just stored it with my peanut butter in the cupboard I quickly checked there and found not just the absence of bread but the absence of peanut butter too.

As I entered into minor freak out mode I looked inside all kitchen cupboards, on my dining room table, and back in my refrigerator. I fruitlessly checked my freezer, my kitchen drawers, and even the Wal-Mart bags from that afternoon, hoping that the peanut butter and bread somehow managed to hideout in the corner of one. I even went out to my car and checked to make sure that I didn’t leave a lone bag in there. With the writing on the wall that I must have not picked up my bag of peanut butter and bread at the checkout stand I did two things. First, I cursed Wal-Mart for having the worst checking out/bagging system in the world. More than once I have left groceries in the bagging area because it is so darn easy to do so with the way bags rotate. Secondly, I called Wal-Mart to claim my items.

Yesterday I shopped at the Conway Wal-Mart located right by Coastal Carolina. I told the person who answered my call my predicament and she transferred me to customer service. The next lady who picked up the phone was sympathetic to my situation and said she would check the log of items left behind by customers at checkout that day, a log that probably numbered around a thousand pages since it is so easy to do. When she came back on the phone she said my items were not listed. However, she kindly remarked, if I brought my receipt in with the missing items listed she could take care of me. After becoming frustrated because I couldn’t find the receipt in the plastic bags a light popped in my head to check the shorts I wore earlier that day to the store. Sure enough my receipt was in one of the pockets. But while the receipt itself was there, something that should have been on it was not.

That’s right, on my receipt there was absolutely no record of peanut butter or bread. Things started to get weird. Earlier that afternoon I walked down that aisle and picked up peanut butter and bread. I am 100% positive. I can still replay the stroll I took to get those particular items perfectly. I still remember which particular jar and loaf I picked, the prices, and how they felt in my hands. I remember dropping the items in my cart. These are my top five scenarios for what possibly could have happened:

1. I put the items in the wrong cart.
2. There was a hole in my cart and the peanut butter and bread fell out.
3. In a true coincidence the Wal-Mart employee bagged the peanut butter and bread without ringing it up (which explains why it didn’t show up on the receipt) but with somehow me still not having the presence of mind to pick it up.
4. My mom, who hates the idea of me eating a peanut butter sandwich for lunch every single day, teleported from Washington State to the Wal-Mart I was in and snatched the contents out of my cart when I wasn’t looking.
5. The nice woman at the checkout stand had read my blog before and knew how I trash Wal-Mart so in an act of revenge she decided to slyly leave out my two most coveted items.

After those scenarios my other suspicions start to get a little more farfetched so I won’t even go there.

Seriously though, what happened?! Not only is my mind perplexed but it forced me into a late night trip to the Piggly Wiggly grocery store by my apartment to insure that I could eat lunch today. If you have any ideas on what may have transpired I would love to hear it. I hope to never be in this situation again. Don’t Blink.