Costco Run with Antoine and Nani

This Costco Run reference is something that would typically never, ever appear in a story of mine, especially if it referred to me doing a Costco Run. I don’t do Costco.

However, at one time when Antoine and I were home-mates, I did have a membership that I shared with Mama. There was no Costco in France and it was an event for the two of us to go to Costco and have their famous hot dog $1.50 meal together. We’d buy a giant bag of peanut M&Ms for our token store purchase. This is a shared memory that still makes us both very happy.

So much so, that since Antoine and Nani still have their Costco card even though they now live in France, Antoine buoyantly suggested that we go to Costco to have hot dogs together, once again. This was something about their stay with me that had not been checked off yet. Until today.

We were all up and about early enough to set out around 10am, and I always prefer an early start. We shopped at Ross first, their needing to get a few things before their departure this weekend. I got Renata a new set of princess panties that I hope she’ll love as a gift from AuntieDiane.

Upon arrival at Costco, I was of course reminded of why I do not do Costco.

To my surprise, however, the cost for the hot dog meal has not increased in over 15 years - still $1.50. We did have our hot dogs and drinks, we did very much enjoy this, all at about 11:30am before the real crowd would probably converge.

We decided to go in the store and at least window shop. None of us thought we needed anything and yet … maybe an hour into the window shop we had picked up a few things. Antoine also took the lead to find some free food samples which we did get quite excited about, like pistachios and hatch chile salsa and chips. We even found another gift that AuntieDiane could send home for Renata. Why were we not surprised.

So at the register, as we went to buy our few selected items for which we didn’t need a cart, for the record … we learned that their Costco card was soon up for renewal, which they knew.

We were told that they needed to renew their $60 membership then and there, or we couldn’t buy our items (which were so few, we didn’t need a cart).

Considering that chances are slim that my beloved French family will be here again, to visit Costco within the year of that membership renewal, we shrugged and left our goods on the register belt.

I would say that was the end of that and evidently, we’re not quite past it yet.

All I know is that this is another memory that will make us very happy to recall and, I won’t be going back to Costco anytime soon.

OK – newsflash – we just learned, per Nani, our resident researcher, that their card actually expired end of December 2022. We think that the lady was actually being kind, to say it was up for renewal (rather than expired) to perhaps save face.

Well OK. I still don’t do Costco.