yule blog

I made a quick stop at the grocery store on my way home this evening after a LONG day at the office. I picked up a few essentials and made a beeline for the express lane. Although I was under the 15-item limit, my purchases were large and heavy enough to require me to utilize a shopping cart.

I pushed the buggy (I call shopping carts “buggies”) across the frozen parking lot and unloaded my items into my truck. I was going to abandon the cart where it was parked… not so much because I’m lazy, mind you, but because it was freezing outside. Besides, I already know what I’m getting for Krismas. I figure, how good do I have to be at this point?

At any rate, I quickly scanned the parking lot to see who (if anyone) was watching me. I’d hate to leave a cart in the middle of a parking lot, only to see myself on the evening news portrayed as “part of the problem.”

I noted that the Salvation Army bell ringer wasn’t concerned with my buggy etiquette, then observed a man sitting behind the steering wheel in an old white pickup truck. This dude looked exactly like the robot gunslinger from the movie Westworld, and he was looking right at me. His icy stare seemed to slice right through the winter wind, my coat and flannel shirt, and right through my Generation X veins. I decided I didn’t want to take any chances with this fellow, so I pushed the buggy an extra 35 feet over to the aluminum corral where I left it all by it’s lonesome.

While driving home, I wondered what I would do if I wake up tomorrow only to discover that I’m just a character in a new Michael Crichton novel. If that should be the case, I’m going to definitely quit my job and sleep in.