Thanks for ruining my day
I like grocery shopping. Mind you, not your normal, hectic, aisle-jamming, aggressive soccer-mom-type grocery shopping, but early morning grocery shopping. When our local supermarket first opens, the parking lot is deserted, the aisles are empty, the produce is fresh, and the market staff are friendly because they have not yet been bludgeoned into surliness by the usual angry mob of self-centered, pushy customers. I like the peacefulness while performing a mandatory task, but not this morning.
Normally, I stroll each aisle and marvel at how lucky we are to live in a country that can produce such bounty. I smell the fresh fruit and vegetables, check out the gadget aisle, and wonder why there are 27 varieties of kitty litter but only 19 brands of bread. It's a trip to notice all of the sales gimmicks and marketing ploys that store management uses to entice you to part with your money. I enjoy all of these things, but not this morning.
When you face a choice of doing something like purchasing food or dying of starvation, you want to make the experience as pleasant as possible, right? I mean, it's not like you have a choice in today's world, so you make the best of a tedious chore. Which is why I do the early morning thing. Peaceful, quiet, calm. But today, my early-morning calm was shattered like a drinking glass dropped on a tile floor.
The aisle incident
Why? Thanks to a bloated, stretch pants-wearing, gold bauble-encrusted, arrogant, rude Northeastern bitch with one of those screechy, squawky, fingernails-on-the-blackboard accents and overpowering perfume that would cause Pepe Le Pew to retch.
There I was, mission accomplished, shopping cart filled with water and vegetables but devoid of bread, ice cream, pizza, rice, chocolate, fruit juice, beer, wine, potatoes, pasta, cookies, crackers, and any other good thing imaginable that diabetics can't eat or drink. As I was turning my cart into the empty checkout counter of one of our friendly Palm City checkout-counter-type persons, I was ambushed. Dry-gulched. Bushwacked by some beer-gutted bag of a whore spawn when she bashed her cart into the side of mine in an attempt get to the conveyor belt before me.
"How rude! I was ahead of you!" the shrill, nasal voice squawked, painted-on Klingon eyebrows malevolently arched in anger and blood-red lipsticky lips pulled back over her teeth in a snarl that would make a pissed-off badger cringe. B2, ever the scion of reason, replied "First of all, Ma'am, YOU rammed MY cart." I was employing my best urbane, soothing, reasonably-voiced imitation of Cary Grant, and I was on a roll.
"Secondly," I oozed, visions of Cary's oh-so-smooth dialog in That Touch of Mink, "It would be somewhat difficult for you to be ahead of me, seeing as how you crashed your cart into the back of mine." But before I could suavely tick off my third point that there were three other empty checkout counters available if the bitch had to cut in line because she was in a hurry, she exploded.
Set phasers on stun ...
I heard language worse than any I ever heard in four years of military service. I was called names that I have to look up meanings for when I have time. The Klingon was screaming, face reddened and little veins popping out on her temples to serve as an accouterment for her 1950s New Jersey-New York City-Connecticut tacky, trashy trollop look. I happened to notice that the six other people in the cavernous, echoing store were watching this unfold, spellbound, much I am sure as they were when engrossed in the Rodney King beating video.
I didn't say another word, turned to the checkout girl, and asked her to please fetch the store manager, and all the while I'm doing this the Klingon keeps up her profanity-laden rant.
Oh, I can't tell you how pleased my new-found checkout ally was to do this. "Right away, sir." she responded, beaming a smile broad enough to make the Grand Canyon look like a paper cut. Well. The Klingon suddenly noticed what was unfolding, cut short her raving, pushed her cart into my legs as she spit out two last words to me that begin with "M" and "F," and stormed off to another line.
As it turned out the store manager, whom I casually know, was already en route to the disaster area before I asked for him. Must have been his keen sense of hearing that tipped him off to the fact that filth-laden sonic booms did not normally occur in his store. I calmly explained what happened, the checkout girl confirmed my story, and the manager tut-tutted and tisk-tisked.
Never did it before, but ...
I patiently explained that tutting and tisking would not do, that I had been a patron of his store since its grand opening, that his own employees were witnesses, and that I would contact corporate headquarters if he did not immediately either call the police or have the Klingon removed from the store. I also told him that I had nothing to do and would stay right where I was, clogging the checkout aisle like bad cholesterol in a major artery until he did so.
The desperate look in his eyes during the three seconds it took for his screech-numbed brain to weigh his options told me I had him. He chose option two, and perhaps the scene that ensued is fodder for another story.
I have never done anything like that before and probably will never do it again. But you know what? It felt good. And besides, did that pants-busting, perfume-encrusted, loudmouth wench really need to crash my line in an empty store so that she could stuff a whole New York-style cheesecake down her triple-chinned neck a few minutes sooner?