Discontinue This

Lately, I’ve been noticing yellow tags on the shelves beneath a few of my favorite things. Apple strudel, noodle-schnitzel, stuff like that.

No, seriously, it started with the Special K Protein Water – which, before you feel obliged to comment, I realize is a big stupid rip-off. I know it’s just Kool-Aid with a little bit of, I don’t know, ground-up pig-snout powder thrown into the mix. But I tried it when I couldn’t chew because of the gum surgery, thank you very much, and I was willing to part with my rip-off dollar if it meant an end to scaring people on the subway with the ceaseless rumblings of my hollow gut.

Well, Special K Protein Water turns out to cost two rip-off dollars, but it does. Work, I mean. You really can drink one of those – what are they? half-liter bottles? – in the morning and honestly not feel hungry again until the afternoon. You feel like the creepiest of alcoholics buying beverages in the pharmacy section of the grocery store, but hey. A yuckmouth girl has got to get her protein somewhere, even if it does beg for a chaser of Vicks-44.

I bought them one at a time for a while – only when I was out and about anyway, hungry, unable to chew, and near a grocery store. Panic would set in. The gurgles. Dangerous feelings of Hunger Bitch wanting to come out. Stop & Shop! Two dollars, chug-chug, ah… Now I’ll make it to my Campbell’s Tomato Supper without having to take off anybody’s face.

But then one day I went in to Stop & Shop and there was a yellow tag beneath the Protein Water on the shelf. “Discontinued,” it said. “50% off.”

So I bought them out.

Of course, now I realize that the product itself wasn’t being discontinued, just S&S was ceasing to carry it in stock. Presumably because it wasn’t selling. Perhaps because it was stocked in the pharmacy aisle? But I digress.

I panicked, and I bought them out. I took all seven bottles home, and one by one I drank them all. Now I can (mostly) chew, and I don’t need them anymore.

The End.

Except then the yellow tags started showing up on other things. First the cat litter – not the actual, $6-a-bag, Feline Pine stuff that my Lady uses, but the $4 Stop & Shop knockoff that my Lady refuses to believe is just as good. It is. Or, rather, it was. When I could get it. Now I can’t – there wasn’t even any left on the shelf for me to buy the last of – so I’ve gone back to good old Tidy Cat. Because $6 a bag is plain old too much to pay for me to poop on. Well, not me, but you know what I mean.

Then it happened to my beer. My beloved Shipyard Fuggles IPA. There was only ever one store in the area that carried it anyway, something about required buy-ins being too high for the rest to want to deal with, but presumably I bought enough to make it worth this one store’s while. Not anymore. Damn, damn, damn! Why did I have to quit drinking for that stupid month? It’s not like it did any good anyway: my hips are still huge and the Football Gods obviously weren’t paying attention.

Besides, if you are going to discontinue it, couldn’t you mark it down more than fifty freaking cents? I didn’t buy them out on this one. I wanted to, even though it wasn’t really any cheaper, but the bum with the Vicks-44 told me to put… the six packs… down.

Fine.

But imagine my chagrin when Johnny and I finally got around to going to Home Depot and discovered yellow tags on the shelves beneath the cabinets we’d halved our kitchen with and now were ready to complete! The cabinets we had been assured we did not need to buy all at one time because they were always carried at Home Depot. Always. Like, forever.

How do you think I felt when I saw those yellow tags, knowing that by now I also couldn’t get my beer?

Oh, and also: the yellow-tagged shelves were empty. Not completely empty – there was a lonely, open, broken box left here and there – but for the most part: tumbleweeds.

Honestly, my brain froze. It was as if I’d never seen a yellow tag before. Like the part of my brain that recognized them took one look and jumped out of my ear. Splat.

Maybe, I speculated openly, I was confused. Maybe this is not where our cabinets were (even though you could plainly see them pictured on the boxes that were left). Maybe these are different (even though you could plainly see etc.). These prices – $7?, $19?, $28? – our cabinets were much more dear than that.

Yes, I must be wrong.

Let’s go find an orange-aproned Guy to help us out…