Shopping 101

It's the end of a hectic and confusing day full of many commitments and minor catastrophes and you find yourself standing in line at the grocery store trying to buy a gallon of milk before you can finally get in the car and drive home and get some supper and put up your feet and let your neck muscles begin to un-knot themselves, and the only thing standing between you and escape is the woman in front of you in line, who, despite her youth and apparent alertness, has somehow reached full adulthood without knowing how to shop.

How can this be?

How can any reasonably intelligent human being stand for eight or ten minutes in a checkout line without making any effort to locate her billfold and count her cash? With all those exhausted shoppers behind her, why does she wait until the cashier tells her the total and only then open up her immense purse and begin a desultory search through random detritus before finally happening upon her billfold? And then why does she peel off the bills as if in slow motion and dump all her change on the counter so she can count out dimes, nickels, and pennies to provide exact change?

Nothing against exact change--it's always a pleasure to get rid of the loose bits of currency clogging up purses and pockets. But if you're planning to hold up a whole line full of shoppers while you count out coins, then it might be a good idea to locate your money while the cashier is scanning your groceries. In fact, finding your money would be a great way to entertain yourself while waiting your turn in line. What else are you going to do--read soap-opera magazines? That way lies madness.

But madness also lies in trying to re-educate total strangers who have never learned how to shop in a busy store without making other shoppers so angry they're tempted to reach out and grab a soap-opera magazine so they can roll it up and batter the thoughtless shopper mercilessly about the head and shoulders. Bad shopper! Bad bad bad!

But we don't do that, do we? We stand there stoically gritting our teeth and biting our tongues and waiting patiently to pay for our purchases. We use our time well: we find our money and hold it tightly in our hands. Very tightly. Don't loosen your grip for a moment or that hand will reach for a magazine and start rolling it up.