In Crowd

Like most adult children of discount shoppers, I’ve had to cope with the lingering psychological wounds of a childhood spent mostly at grocery store customer service counters, where no line was ever too long to keep my mother from getting a five-cent refund because of a mismarked box of corn flakes.

Yesterday, in a very casual yet purposeful manner, my husband announced — with little consideration for my cats’ feelings — that he wants to get a dog.

A dog.

To most normal, full-blooded suburban wives who drive SUVs, are fully vested in their 401(k)s and think puppies (and, by extension, human children) are adorable and necessary, this might be really satisfying news — which would, no doubt, be followed up with plans to put that dog in a jaunty Santa hat and add him to this year’s beach-scape Christmas card portrait.

But to my ears, his announcement sounded more like, “I want eight kids and a divorce. P.S. I’m friends with Michael Lohan now.”

It takes all kinds.

Or at least that’s what I tell myself. I don’t know how else to explain People of Walmart, a new blog devoted to showcasing the under-clad train wrecks found puzzling over Doritos options at supercenters across the nation.

Really what I mean is: It takes all kinds of restraint. It's difficult not to laugh in that pointing, judging, superior manner that I’m so good at. Truly, something’s not right with these folks, and it’s not nice to mock the disenfranchised.

When a grown man is casually yet confidently wearing a garbage bag as a skirt while shopping for Gladware in the nation’s No. 1 discount store, it’s a sign there may be problems at home.

Despite what Woody Allen and half of Hollywood’s directors are telling us to think, it is absolutely A-OK that Roman Polanski was finally caught.

I don’t care how many Oscars or stepdaughter-marrying friends you have. Or how brilliant, creative and accomplished you might be. Or what a sweetheart your village bread maker thinks you are. If one drugs and rapes a 13-year-old, then one’s subsequent life should not involve fancy chalets or crusty baguettes — that is, unless one’s prison bunkmate has just suggested some light role-playing from “The Sound of Music.”

When the Bravo network began casting for the “Real Housewives of Washington, D.C.” — the latest in a reality show franchise known for its indecorum and boobs — it needn’t have looked any farther than the congressional floor, which has plenty of both.

Throw in some grade-school insults, angry table-flipping and light wig-pulling, and the “You lie!” dust-up’s bipartisan theatrics are nothing more than a preview montage to next season’s highly anticipated “She called me low-budget so I called her a lying (bleep) and then she told so-and-so I was nothing but a (bleeping) (bleep) and then I told her I was sorry but she was all, ‘Say you’re sorry again in front of everyone or I’ll make you’ ” episode.

And yet there are lessons to be learned here.

I have two absolute favorite pastimes. The first is that I like to pick my husband’s brain to get his honest-to-goodness opinion on major life puzzlers such as, “If you could take either of our cats out for a beer, whom would you pick?” and “Which cat do you think would’ve gotten into Harvard early admission were he a human?”

Usually my husband responds by quietly saying, “Please don’t ever ask me that again.” Other times he’ll turn up the radio and pretend he didn’t hear me at all. Eventually, though, when my relentless staring and prodding get to be too much for him, he’ll indulge me. “Fine! I would take Dignan to a bar. And Ollie would’ve gotten into Harvard. But I have no idea which cat would get married first, which would look better in jeans or who would make us dinner if he could.”

Incidentally, my second absolute favorite pastime is sorting my meds by shape, size and color.

Twenty-eight years ago, around this thrilling back-to-school time of year, I was able to set the bar really low for not only my future behavior but also that of several generations of first-graders by purposefully and forcefully biting my principal on the hand during the first minute of my first day in a new school. (You should know that when I use the term “principal,” I actually mean “principal who was a 12-foot-tall nun with a head like a butternut squash and a frown that prompted our ancestors to invent the phrase ‘Uh oh.’ ”)

I'm no expert on paleontology or what caused dinosaur extinction, but I'd like to think at some point the lady dinos had had it up to their ear holes with the slim-pickins, so they all got together and decided to say "no way, José-a-saurus" to any further mating with the remaining, lazy, no good, non-earning males — who, I'm guessing, spent their days hanging around half-clad sabertooths at the local pterodactyl wing joint till the wee hours of the prehistoric morn instead of providing for their hatchlings.

I know, I know. I'm just being a silly archaeopteryx. This isn't at all how the dinosaurs died off.

First, it was socialized medicine that did it. Don't argue with me, I've seen the commercials. Second, as I'm sure it was during dinosaur times, there are a lot of females out there who apparently think there's nothing sexier than male vertebrates of the big, old loser deadbeat variety.

Not to name-drop like some scarlet-letter-worthy people and/or governors I know, but God (yes, the God) and I were chatting about life the other night when I asked him this very significant and philosophical riddle: What’s the difference between Gov. Mark Sanford, Sen. John Ensign, former Rep. Chip Pickering and the swine flu?

Answer: The word “flu.”

As a resident of a certain state where a certain You-Know-Who did a certain something in Argentina, I think it’s time that a certain someone — fine, I’ll do it — use the opportunity to offer a little guidance to any gals out there who might be considering some married governor dating of their own.

Have a seat right next to me, ladies, and listen closely: