I Don't Know, I Don't See Them

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"I can take that for you."

I look at her. She smiles back at me, dressed in a Wal- green's vest and a name tag on her breast. Anna reaches out for my purchase, a belt that I need to keep my pants up on my fat ass. I'm standing on a line with one person on it. This one woman at the cash register is doing the usual foolishness at the counter. Why do people do it, I don't know.

When I get on the line to a cash register, I KNOW HOW MUCH I'M GOING TO SPEND. So I ether take it out of my wallet in cash and have it in hand, or I take out my credit card, and have it in hand. In any event, when the woman tells me my total, I'm not keeping the rest of mankind waiting. I just hand over my cash or card and get busy with the transaction. No, you always have these asshole women, and they are almost always women, with the next runners up being old people. Old men and women who walk up to the register as if they are oblivious as to what is going to be asked of them.

They stand there with some goofy grin on their faces until the cashier says X amount of dollars, and then they're eyes widen in surprise. What the fuck did they think was about to happen? Do they believe that the Cashier is going to say, "Hey, just take it...the stuff is free?" Fuck no, you're going to have to pay for it. So now the fun and games begin. Brain in asshole customer then produces their purse and then pocket book, a guy....his wallet, and they root. They search for money or credit cards or lint, whatever. It takes them forever to produce legal tender as if inside of their purses is the square footage of the Amazon Jungle, or the Saharan tableland.

So I'm standing there, watching this dumb bitch as she turns on a searchlight over her head and starts to sweep the inside of her purse with it, searching for money or credit cards like an lost ship on the Atlantic. What the fuck? And then Anna comes along, all smiles. "I can ring that up for you over here, sir." I blink. In fact, I'm taken aback. I don't know what to do at first. As if such customer service was some kind of deadly trap. I move with her and she takes my belt, crosses over to a nearby cash register and rings me up. Now, like I told you, I ALREADY HAVE MY CASH IN HAND, so I pay the woman while the dumb bitch at the other counter is laying change out now from her change purse.

But it's not over yet. I stroll for the front door and there is this sales guy standing there with one of those blue Walgreen vests on, smiling as if he stole something from me. "Hope you enjoyed shopping Walgreen's!" He says to me. I look at him. Yeah, I mutter back, looking for some kind of concealed weapon. "Hurry on back now!" Yeah...I'll do that. What the fuck is this. The Twilight Zone? Are these people so close to civilization that they are civilized?  Or am I so close to corrupt civilization that I don't know what the fuck is going on? I suspect the latter. I don't know what the fuck is going on.

My father drives me back home, since I don't have a driver's license, and I plop down in front of the television with my parents. We are engrossed by CNN's coverage of the Earthquake/Tsunami/Nuclear Meltdown in Japan. These people are in sorry assed shape, and my parents and I just talk about the disaster for hours on end. My mother thinks that such destruction was visited upon them because they were doing some thing bad. My father and I are amazed at how vans, buses, large ships and homes are swept away by the rushing tidal wave and bobbed around the tops of the water like toys. I make two predictions. 1) if anyone was on foot when that wall of water hit, they're dead. If they were in homes when that wall of water hit, they're dead, and 2) that Nuclear reactor is either going to leech out a ton of dangerous radiation to the surrounding suburbs, or explode altogether in a big boom.

My father stays as grim and quiet as usual.

Me, I go to his ample bar, pull out his FAMILY sized bottle of Jack Daniels and begin drinking. Shit, I'm a hobo. What do you expect from me?

Hobobob