It would seem that at some point in the recent past we stole our neighbor’s mail. Well, we didn’t intentionally steal it as much as we accidentally acquired their mail.
My defense for this lapse is that we aren’t mail thieves, per se, as much as distracted, pre-elderly homeowners who assume any and all mail in our mailbox is, indeed, our mail.
But that assumption would be wrong. Oh yes, so wrong.
In fact, I wouldn’t have noticed this theft accidental acquirement if not for the good old coupons. You know, the paper kind that come in the mail IF you’re a Kroger Plus Customer.
I’m talking about the ones that are specifically sent to you because you buy the same stuff over and over.
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Look at those shopping carts all lined up. So tidy. {Photo via Pixabay by Michael Gaida}
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IT’S LIKE THIS, my gentle readers: the other day I went to get our mail from our mailbox and I see that our monthly Kroger Plus Customer coupon envelope is among the letters/junk mail in my hand. I go inside the house, open the envelope, whereupon I feast my eyes on our very special and specific coupons.
[Some of which are for FREE money off your order if you spend a certain amount of money at the checkout. This is normal.]
But it dawns on me that just a few days before Zen-Den had retrieved the mail from the mailbox, opened what he assumed was our Kroger Plus Customer envelope and left the coupons on the kitchen counter for me to file.
Which I hadn’t done yet.
Suddenly I start looking at these coupons on the counter, thinking how peculiar it is that we have coupons for Hubba Bubba bubble gum, and Annie’s Organic Cinnamon Rolls with Icing, and Simply Potatoes frozen potatoes. Items we don’t buy. Ever.
[I also notice that the FREE coupons are for things like Betty Crocker cake mix, not for FREE money. That’s not our normal.]
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Look at Barney Kroger, founder of the Kroger supermarket chain. So dapper. {photo source here via Library of Congress}
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SLOWLY IT DAWNS on me that the coupons we have sitting on our kitchen counter are someone else’s coupons. And because the envelope that these coupons came in is long gone, there’s no way to return the coupons to them.
Meaning, of course, that we, the Beans, jointly and severally, are miscreants of the lowest order, stealing [acquiring?] grocery coupons from our neighbors, like we’re two addled-brained overwrought suburbanites without the sense to read the front of an envelope.
Which clearly we are… but does not necessarily mean that we’re above using an accidentally acquired coupon to get a free box of cake mix.
Because, you know, CAKE!
I’ve joined in a yearlong monthly event called 
THE SPECTACLED BEAN 