Senior Living: An ode to shopping at Costco

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Let me start with an unsponsored confession: I love Costco.

There, it’s out of the way. I’m promoting an enterprise, but they’re not paying me to do so. And I don’t want to annoy every merchant from coast to coast. Shop where you care to shop, dear readers. This is just a septuagenarian love song for my weekly excuse to get out of the house, go somewhere fun and spend an affordable chunk of my pension money.

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So on to Costco. Get your shopping cart ready … and if you’re 40 years younger, sit Junior in that convenient rear section of the cart.

I’ll actually start in the parking lot. Two preliminary steps for an Old Fart: Park somewhere within a less-than-marathon march to the front door of Costco. Remember EXACTLY where you’ve parked. Or almost exactly. Or in the range where you can spot either your front hood or licence plate.

Next move: Fish out the membership card you will have to display on the way in after grabbing the aforementioned cart. And store it in your front pocket with the bank card you’ll be using to pay for the future necessities and very alluring non-necessities.

Now into the store …

First section, just inside the entrance: row after row of TVs. Each is huge. Each is beautiful. Each is not what you need, really … but it’s hard to take your eyes off those immense images.

But they cost a few bucks. Example: the 65-inch Samsung QLED 4K. It looks gorgeous — and maybe $998 is jumping out of your wallet (or, more likely, your credit card). You’ll be tempted. But you’ve probably got a decent TV that you watch until geezers’ bedtime at 9:30.

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So onward. And fish out your shopping list — without accidentally dropping the cards I’ve advised you to store in your pocket. Onward to the food section, a.k.a. the Yummy Section a.k.a. the Don’t Linger in the Cake Section.

Here again, it’s wise to adhere to the carefully crafted list of foods you need … plus MAYBE a temptation or two. Maybe three.

The shopping list is governed by the size of your freezer … not to mention the stuff you’ve got stored there already. Suggested products: sausages, hamburger patties, fish fillets and — for a major treat — nice steaks.

On to the famous Costco bird. The company maintains the price of its barbecue chicken: $7.99. That’s at least two meals for me and my beloved partner. Plus the carcass can be boiled up to produce stock for soup.

I’m branching off into Chef Zone here. The message is: Score a BBQ bird. You won’t be disappointed.

Moving out of that zone, I head toward alcohol — the quantity I can handle at my delicate age … 60 years past having someone score a beer for a teenage squirt in the neighbourhood.

I’m no longer a squirt (though occasionally squirting, but that’s another column). I’m a beer snob at Costco, and my indulgence is Guinness draft Stout, canned at a brewery that was established in 1759 … or a few years before my legal drinking age.

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It’s great beer that goes down well with any of my aforementioned meal products. And unlike my loopy behaviour as a college student, I can make do through dinner and an early evening with one 440 mL large can.

Add a four-litre box of half-assed Australian wine for my No Beer partner and I’m out of that Costco section … where perhaps I’ve spent too much time reminiscing about indulgences.

Now I’m in the home stretch of Costco: breakfast cereal, giant tin of ground coffee (which my stomach can barely handle), medical products I’ll not divulge.

My weekly outing is nearly completed. A glance at underwear bargains (again, I’ll not divulge) and on to the self checkout.

Having screwed up that process my first five or six times, I now know how to scan my purchases, pay my tab, gobble up a great hotdog and head for the exit, where a Costco clerk checks my bill and my cart’s contents.

Then it’s on to the car — which I eventually find.

— Mike Boone writes the Life in the 70s column. mchlboone@gmail.com

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