Very strange things can happen when shopping at the grocery store. Have you ever been followed up and down the aisles while shopping for food? It happens to me all the time. And it is creepy because it means that you are being watched.

Now, we are not talking about incidents like the time in the produce department after carefully choosing baking potatoes. A young man was wandering about looking rather pole-axed. Mentally tagging him "newly-wed," I promptly forgot about him and went over to the greenery.

"Excuse me," a diffident voice said. "Could you tell me what's the difference between one potato and another"? It was the pole-axed young man. His wife had asked him to pick up a couple of pounds of potatoes on his way home and he had not realized that there were so many different types. So, back to the spuds we went to give him an education in potatoes. Why, though, had he asked me for help with all these other shoppers around? "Well," he said, "You looked them right in the eye."

Nor are we talking about shoppers who are always stopping me and asking what I did with this or that item of food in my cart. If I made the mistake of mentioning a sauce, sure enough, I had to explain how to make the sauce. This usually gathered an audience. There have been times when I thought I had opened an aisle-side cookery school.

No, we are talking about those creepy shopping "shadows." Like the time a woman followed me up and down aisles watching what I put in my cart and writing in a notebook. I finally confronted her and asked why she was watching me and what on earth she was writing. She blurted out: "I'm writing it all down because you seem to know what to buy."

Maybe someone out there can tell me how she would know that the food bought for a family of two bottomless pits, aka, teenage boys, one active eight-year old boy, one six foot super-busy husband, and one harried self would be the right foods for another family - quantity and sex unknown.

This has happened so many times in so many countries, cities, and stores that it is now standard shopping procedure. Experience says it is best to ignore the shadow and remain silent. One time, though, really stands out in memory as beyond strange.

Walking up and down the aisles loading my cart, it became clear that, once again, a woman was following me. She watched what I chose, which was all too common - except for one thing. She would pick up and put in her cart exactly the same number of cans or packages and exactly the same brands that I had chosen. Fighting an urge to hum "Me and My Shadow," we moved silently through the supermarket in this strange, follow-the-leader fashion. When we came to the produce department, they had a special on fresh mushrooms. I filled a bag and weighed it. The woman filled a bag with exactly the same weight. We got to the checkout counter, with the shadow obediently at heel.

I placed my items on the conveyor belt under close surveillance from behind. As I put the bag of mushrooms on the belt, the woman finally broke the silence. "What are those called and what do you do with them"?

As I said, very strange things can happen when shopping at the grocery store.

Learn more about this author, Risa Wolf.
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