My Cranky Mood Is Someone Else's Fault, Certainly Not Mine

I experienced a severe cranky mood today – sort of like the ones my mother used to have, Dear God! Yeah, I nearly went volcanicus eruptus at the grocery store. Some people might say it’s because I’m getting old and cranky, but I’M NOT, I’M NOT, I’M NOT! I’m going to use the classic American excuse for today’s bout – it ain’t my fault. All those danged slow people at the grocery store and the prolonged heat wave we’re having conspired to set me off.

I was so tired of sitting in the house sweltering (there’s no relief outside) I decided to drive to Fred Meyer’s to gas up my truck and buy some ice cream and popsicles. Gassing up, in spite of blowing 50 bucks, went okay, but once I stepped inside the store, time seemed to warp into space continuum SLOW.

I needed to use the bathroom before I started shopping because it’s hard to concentrate on shopping when you have to pee. Hopping up and down on one leg while squeezing the peaches tends to make one look like a really weird pervert. So anyway, I get behind this woman in the hallway to the bathrooms, said hallway amply wide enough for two people to walk abreast or one person to pass another. But I could not pass that woman! She apparently did not have one iota of awareness that I was behind her and wanted to go around her because she managed somehow – as slowly as is humanly possible – to amble down that long hallway from one side to the other effectively blocking me from passing. What is this, NASCAR, I was thinking.

Once out on the main floor I quickly toured the aisles and picked up my groceries and headed for the check stands. Halfway down the ice cream aisle I spied a nearly empty check stand; there were only two women there buying a pair of shoes. I should have known that Murphy’s Law was about to kick in, but I sailed triumphantly into that checkout lane thinking, “This shouldn’t take long.”

So, naturally, there was no price tag on the shoes, which apparently were on sale, and the cash register could not ring up the sales price no matter how many times the checker attempted to do so (Many!) I’m standing there with several frozen TV dinners, my popsicles and my rocky road ice cream all melting, trying to be patient, which is NOT one of my virtues, and the checker decides she’d better leaf through the pages of the current sales circular to find the shoes on sale. After three leaf-throughs of an eight –page circular, front to back each time, no luck. So, the checker gets on the telephone to call someone for help. Do you think anyone came quickly to help? NO! After several minutes of trying to be polite and wait my turn, I picked my groceries up off the conveyor belt, loaded them back into my cart and moved to another check stand. I was tempted to walk off and leave my groceries, but I wanted them too badly to do that.

I was feeling totally surly by the time I exited Fred’s and about as unfriendly as Doc Martin. I confess I almost had a tantrum and yelled as loud as I could in my mother’s most belligerent voice, “Come on people! Drive it, park it or get the H out of my way!”