Grocery stores befuddle me. Maybe it’s the fluorescent lighting, maybe it’s the inane music, or maybe it’s the sheer visual overload of the seeming infinite panorama of products, but probably the biggest reason a simple trip to the grocery store leaves me a stumbling zombie is their steady trend to become SUPERmarkets.

When I was a kid, the local market had creaking hardwood floors, everything you’d need stacked to the stamped tin ceiling, and an owner who’d always give you some penny candy. When I was older, single, and often near broke, I could still quickly navigate the new burgeoning behemoths, making beelines from the cornflakes in plastic bags, to the ramen noodles, to the six packs of Old Milwaukee. Then the evolution to big box stores went into high gear, offering complete aisles devoted to pizzas or flavored water, on-site coffee shops, bars, and banking counters. Once the markets started adding daycare and pharmacies, I realized we were on the way to cradle-to-grave mega-centers sporting wedding chapels, medical clinics, and airline terminals. All of this, of course, will do nothing but increase my general bewilderment.

My wife does most of the grocery shopping. Compared to me, she is a supermarket savant. She carries a schematic diagram of the stores we shop at in her head and can direct you to anything from leeks to sewing machine oil. And her skills at the self-checkout are so advanced that she often comes to the rescue of first-timers struggling to scan a bunch of bananas.

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My wife carries a schematic diagram of the stores we shop at in her head and can direct you to anything from leeks to sewing machine oil. And her skills at the self-checkout are so advanced that she often comes to the rescue of first-timers struggling to scan a bunch of bananas.

RON DAVIS

My role when I accompany my wife now is to lurk behind her, randomly rapping a knuckle on the cantaloupes (not sure why) or plucking interesting-looking canned goods from the shelves, pondering questions like, “Have I ever eaten a garbanzo bean?” and “Should I?” When she grows tired of my loitering, she sends me off on missions—“Get me some golden raisins, but only the ones in a purple box”—knowing that will occupy me for a half hour, or at least until I give up and sheepishly corral one of the associates to lead the way. Without them, it could be days.

Years ago, we had to make a plan for finding each other before we entered these mazes of opulence: “Meet me at the checkouts when you’re done.” To the utter embarrassment of our kids, we even tried carrying walkie talkies. Cell phones, apart from the annoying, one-sided conversations they generate (“They don’t have the 12 ounce size!”), are a wonderful invention for finding each other now, if you remember to bring them.

And these stores are everywhere. Before we moved to Eau Claire, we lived near a city that was just large enough to support two warehouse-sized food stores. One day I dropped my wife off for our monthly provisioning at one of them and headed to a hardware store where I spent probably more time than I should have ogling the drill presses and trying to remember what I was looking for. I hurried back to meet my wife, fearing she would be already waiting outside in a windswept parking lot with a bulging cart of perishables and a smoldering glare. No wife there, so I trotted inside and began casting about through the aisles. Growing increasingly worried at not finding her, I started to imagine even scarier scenarios: Was there an emergency? Had an ambulance carried her away? Had she left me for a stock boy? I staked out the ladies room and worked the aisles again and again, until it finally hit me: Was this the store where I dropped her off? It wasn’t.

Another time, my wife parked a cart filled to overflow at the service desk while she went in search for me before checking out. Once she found me (in a corner with a motorcycle magazine), we headed back to the front, only to find our cart was missing. A well-intentioned young lady explained she thought the cart was abandoned and had completely unloaded it. As we gazed back at the towering shelves holding items we’d have to find again, I became a believer: a grocery store can reduce you to tears.

At Festival Foods here, the management has thoughtfully provided huge triangular placards hovering over each aisle entrance, listing the categories of goods found there for helpless idiots like me. At the bottom of one especially helpful list is an entry that I know will be greeted with approval by my wife: “Lost Spouse.”