A Guy Walks Into A Store

Have you ever tried to pay for something in a store that has four registers but only one clerk working and one register open and one person ahead of you in line, (whose look appears to be cobbled together from the Appalachian Hipster Memaw Collection, from the spiky grey haircut, with multiple earrings in each ear, to the capri jeans, from the Full Throttle Saloon t-shirt, to the ankle tattoo they picked up in Sturgis), and she has a stack of 'sale' items and a fistful of coupons, who is rifling through their purse the size of carry-on luggage while chattering non-stop to the clerk to let her know when the total price gets to $50., while also talking to herself about her missing debit card, that is always in the same place and how weird it is she can't find it right now, because she always finds it and this means that perhaps something else is going on, exactly what she doesn't say, but talks about in ominous tones and whatever it is, appears to be nefarious in nature, while still talking to the clerk to let her know when the total gets to $50., and at this point she is now chin deep in the detritus that is her life, somehow managing to touch everything in the bag except what it is she is looking for, (old receipts, unfilled prescriptions, a fork, a sponge, mexican stamps and a diaphragm, but no debit card.) and the clerk has been trying to get her attention to let her know that she is indeed at $50., and then go ahead and add this, she says, 'I'm not sure if we have this, but if we do can we return it? The clerk says, 'just keep your receipt', which obviously won't be a problem for her, and says, I'll go ahead and pay cash then, 'I've got a fifty in here', she yelps firmly and definitively, while grabbing a handful of bills, none of which is a fifty, then hands the guy a $5. bill, and turns to you and says 'sorry', but you don't reply right away because you know she doesn't mean it, and that this is business as usual with her, and that the behavior she is exhibiting, from a distance, might appear to be ditsy, quirky or more generously absentminded, but when viewed up close it becomes obvious almost immediately that whatever is going on is nothing new and had longed ago lapsed into actual dementia, so you just say 'Uh huh.', and meanwhile the clerk is holding the $5. bill trying to figure out what to do with it, and she looks up from the deep recesses of her mania and says, 'Go ahead and take it out of the $50.', and the clerk rightly points out that he is in fact holding a $5. bill, and she says, 'Oh, I saw the 5...', letting us fill in the rest of the sentence, and automatically goes into another speech about how she just put the $50. in her purse and always keeps it in the same place and start's to wonder out loud about a list of suspects and a possible plot, and starts to hand the clerk a bunch of bills, the sum total of which does not add up to $50., and suddenly blurts out, 'Here's my debit card!, that's weird because I always put in the same place, can I use my debit card instead?', and the clerk says yes, and she says, if I need to return something will that be o.k.?, just keep your receipt says the clerk, then she slowly packs everything up and eventually leaves the store and then the clerk turns to you and says, 'Sorry about the wait?'

Yeah, me too.