Ernest needed milk

It all started with a simple plan: Ernest needed milk. The morning was unremarkable—sunbeams splashing across the kitchen table, a tepid cup of coffee half-forgotten beside a crossword puzzle—and Ernest, feeling virtuous, decided to walk to the neighborhood grocery store. Little did he know that his ordinary errand was about to unfold into a reality-bending carnival of absurdity.

From the moment he crossed the store’s automatic doors, something felt…off. The produce section seemed suspiciously lively. Cabbages rustled like conspiratorial hens, onions whispered like snickering children, and a row of carrots stood upright in their bin, as if they were saluting. Just as Ernest chalked it up to too little sleep, a lemon tumbled off its pile and rolled toward him.

“Pssst!” hissed the lemon in a raspy voice, its peel rustling. “The mushrooms in Aisle Six are plotting a takeover. You didn’t hear it from me.” Then it spun on its side and disappeared beneath a pyramid of grapefruit.

Ernest blinked, convinced he was hallucinating. To steady himself, he headed for the dairy aisle—milk was his mission, after all. But the path was blocked by a human-sized tomato wearing a jaunty fedora and reciting monologues in an overdramatic Shakespearean tone.

“Alas!” the tomato proclaimed, dramatically pressing a gloved vine to its pulpy chest. “I am destined to be diced into salsa, consumed without dignity! Wherefore art thou, salad spinner of mercy?”

Visitors gawked, but none seemed fazed—except for an elderly woman who congratulated the tomato on its performance and dropped two coins into the fedora. Baffled, Ernest sidestepped the theatrical produce, inching toward the dairy aisle.

As he turned the corner, he nearly collided with a stampeding group of bizarre cheerleaders, chanting:

“Give us an E! Give us a G! Give us an G—… wait, how do we spell egg again?”

Their pom-poms were knitted from spaghetti strands, and they propelled themselves across the aisle on pogo sticks—because, clearly, normal walking was so last century.

Finally, Ernest reached the dairy fridge. But as soon as he grabbed the handle to open it, a boisterous procession of singing milk cartons waltzed out, performing a synchronized routine to an upbeat samba. Their labels—skim, 2%, whole—glowed like neon marquees, and each carton had tiny cardboard arms waving rhythmically.

“Hey friend,” crooned the lead carton in a buttery tenor, “care to join our conga line?”

“No thanks, I—I just need one of you to, um, take home,” Ernest stuttered. The entire milk chorus gasped in cartoonish horror.

“Take one of us… away?” squeaked a petrified skim milk. “But then our harmony will be incomplete!”

Ernest suddenly felt like he’d walked into a tragic opera: the anguished dairy pleaded, the clarinet piped through invisible speakers, and overhead lights flickered with dramatic flair. Guilt nibbling at him, Ernest tiptoed away from the milky ensemble and snatched a carton from the shelf (careful to choose the one that was asleep at the time).

At checkout, a bored-looking cashier scanned the dozing milk, only to have the cashier’s drawer pop open and release a torrent of confetti. A triumphant voice boomed over the loudspeaker:

“Congratulations, esteemed shopper! You’re our one-millionth customer to resist the Mango Mutiny and survive the kale fiasco!”

Applause erupted from nowhere, accompanied by a spontaneous polka band. Nearby, the store manager—a mustachioed pineapple who exuded an air of bureaucratic authority—shook Ernest’s hand with a flourish.

“We are pleased to present you,” declared the pineapple with a dignified cough, “with a lifetime supply of Surreal-Shopping therapy sessions, absolutely free.”

Ernest, now holding a small trophy shaped like a dancing cucumber, looked around in a daze. In the corner, the squabbling mushrooms in Aisle Six were marching in protest, chanting in squeaky voices about fair wages and compost rights. The lemon zipped by again, tipping its invisible hat.

When Ernest finally stumbled out of the automatic doors—milk, trophy, and a questionable sense of sanity in tow—he gazed back into the store’s neon glow. The everyday grocery run had turned into the most baffling, uproarious escapade of his life. He trudged home, half-expecting the milk carton to break into a solo number at any moment.

Suffice to say, the next time Ernest needed milk, he seriously considered ordering delivery—because in a world where fruit converses in iambic pentameter and dairy stages a samba, perhaps it’s best to keep routine errands just a touch more routine. Or not.