I Hate Me, Part 107,263
It was a shit day off, I had just gotten into a beef with my next door neighbor (aka: the trash burner). When that kind of stuff happens, I replay it constantly in my head and it hamstrings my day. I had to go to Foodtown, I knew the potential for annoyance* was high, but I wanted to get out of the house. I wanted to make a surgical strike, I needed salad from the salad bar, some apples, yogurt, laundry detergent, and paper towels. I didn’t need a cart or a basket, in my head I figured out my store route; salad,apples,detergent,towels,yogurt, check-out. I had a giant cup of coffee before I left and I felt bulletproof. I got in and everything went to plan, I started celebrating (well, maybe not celebrating but it was the kind of day where any victory was good) and then I hit the check-out (cue the brake squealing, record scratching sound). The shortest line was the express line but in front of me was an old guy in a motorized assist cart and a guy who comes into my store who’s referred to as “The Kasabian guy”. A nice enough guy who seems a bit medicated and always asked about upcoming releases for this english band called Kasabian, sometimes he’d come in a couple of times a week and check. I hadn’t seen him in a while and I really didn’t want to get into a conversation much less a conversation about Kasabian. The guy in the motorized cart was going as fast as a guy in a motorized cart can go and the Kasabian guy had his stuff all spread out on the conveyer belt and was standing in such a way that I couldn’t put anything down without risking a conversation. It was about this time that my pyramid of groceries started to shift (remember I didn’t want to be slowed down by a cart or basket). It was a good stack, in my left hand a flat container of salad with carton of individual yogurts on top and a bag of apples resting on top of everything. In my right hand, a roll of paper towels under my arm and the jug of detergent in my hand. The apples started rolling around in their bag, threatening to spill out, I tried to steady it and ended up dropping everything onto the conveyer belt, knocking over most of the Kasabian guy’s stuff. I apologized to him and he had no idea who I was. In my flustered-ness I blurted out, “Still listening to Kasabian?”, he made a weird lemon face and said no.
*A side note to the word “annoy”. My wife says I never met a pun I didn’t like and I know that puns are the lowest rung of humor but… A long time ago my friend Dave and I did a couple of songs on a four-track under the name Annoy-Bauten ( a pun on german band Einsturzende Neubauten), we did a couple of Sabbath songs (I forget which) and impersonated William Shatner singing them. Not as good as it sounds.
Sometimes the shortest checkout line … isn’t.
And no matter which one you go into, the others always move faster. Especially the one you were going to go to, which ends up in a race between you and the person that was in ‘your’ place to get through first. Funny how you get to hate so much, some people you never met…
And how, exactly, does having a basket slow you down in any possible way?
It was actually getting the basket, there was people around the stack of baskets, sometimes they get stuck, sometimes there’s garbage in it. No thank you.
My Foodtown in Ocean is notorious for dirty baskets … maybe that’s why they keep all their flyers right next to them … I line the bottom of mine like there’s no tomorrow.
Annoy-Bauten for Sunday Music please!