I love the supermarket; the bigger the better.

It’s where I visit my money. The supermarket is one of the few visible conduits linking work and sustenance. It says, “You have a job? Here are some grapes and a gallon of Hawaiian Punch. You’ll be fine for another week. We’ll be here.”

I go late at night, hoping to have the place more or less to myself. You turn your shiny chrome cart up a vast aisle empty of people and full of brands, a spotless checkerboard floor underfoot, a million candlepower lighting your path to the Cocoa Puffs, and you think, this is America at her best. The temperature is perfect, the math is easy, life is good.

Should you forget what you came for, there are helpful words eight feet tall up on the wall: MEAT. DAIRY. PRODUCE. You really can’t go wrong.

Except last Friday. About midnight, I encountered a guy in Aisle 3 pretending not to be looking for tampons. Seeing me coming, he did a half-kick sidestep from feminine hygiene into toilet tissues – but I knew what he was there for. He was around 45 and wore the desperate look of a man with a teenage daughter in need. No wedding ring on him; nobody else to go.

I grew up with three sisters and no brothers, and now have two daughters and no sons. I’ve bought as many boxes of tampons as I’ve bought boxes of cigars. (Once got the two mixed up after a few beers and guillotined the tip clean off a Tampax. Not much of a smoke, but you can floss at the same time.)

I know feminine hygiene products like some guys know baseball trivia, and I’m not ashamed to brag about it at cocktail parties.

“Sure, Bill, the Red Sox always slump in August. But give me a refill and we’ll talk regular absorbency. Seen the Super? Can you believe that Ultra?”

I’ll debate you, man. Maxi pad, overnight protection, ultrathins, light-day liners … bring it on! Don’t get me started on built-in deodorant protection or we’ll be here ‘til morning. Would you like wings with that? What about a super-long maxi overnight with reinforced four-wall protection for side leakage prevention? Order today and I’ll throw in a set of floor mats.

I was out mowing my lawn with the riding tractor last summer when I saw something brown and white and red ahead, kind of a lump in the grass, size of a baseball. It looked soft, so I did what guys on mowers do: full speed ahead, ask questions later.

Next thing I know it’s snowing dirty pink cotton all around me.

Our basset hound, with his extraordinary nose, had sniffed out one of the girl’s tampons in her bathroom wastebasket and devoured it. Being rather tampon-shaped himself, he passed it out the other end only half digested.

I had to take a shower after the salmon-colored blizzard cleared, but I’m not sure I want to discourage the hound’s behavior, as having strings attached makes his mess so much easier to pick up. Give them a few twirls and the centrifugal force carries them right over the hedge. They’ll land two backyards away, once you get the hang of it.

Feeling bad for the guy in Aisle 3, I parked the cart next to his, and put some napkins and supers that my girls didn’t really need yet into my own cart. “You, too?” I asked. He took the bait, and I pointed him to what he needed. After he turned the corner, I put the stuff from my cart back on the shelf. It’s the supermarket. It’ll be here next week.