Sheesh!

I just got back from what I thought would be a quick run up to the local Giant Foods for some groceries. Usually, this is a pretty neat and clean process for me – I know where everything in the store is located, parking is easy, etc., and we’re many weeks from the first snow warnings that always result in cannibalistic hordes raping and pillaging their way through the aisles. No, this was going to be simple.
Alas, it was not to be. The place was full of old people. Now normally, I’m more than tolerant of senior citizens. Hell, I’m well on my way there, myself. And I harbor few of the normal prejudices towards them and generally feel at least as comfortable with them as with my own contemporaries. There is often real wisdom and knowledge with those folks.
But these people weren’t just old – they were OOOOLD. They were old in ways geologists talk of old. They remembered what it was like to crawl out of the oceans and first walk upon the land. When they complain of urban renewal, they’re talking about the Great Pyramid. Fights and arguments broke out at the registers because the slots in the credit card machines were too thin to take cuneiform clay tablets. People insisted their receipts be printed in Aramaic. Cashiers had to constantly reject flint arrowheads as payment. I mean, these guys were OLD. And the store was full of ‘em!
I had to enter a sort of mental fugue state to survive waiting in line as each penny was painfully counted and then recounted before payment could be tendered. It was agony.
And then there was the parking lot! Crammed full of Cadillacs, Lincolns, and other great boats, each manned by someone whose head barely rose over the rim of the steering wheel. AND ALL GOING LESS THAN ONE MILE AN HOUR. I waited in horror as people who were more used to mastodon hunts tried to wheel their autos about the lot. The process was so slow that we were forced to change traffic patterns several times to account for continental drift and plate tectonics. I almost clawed my face off in frustration.
But luck was with me, one of the ancient mariners had forgotten to block more than a single lane while making a turn. A sliver of sunshine appeared to his left. It wasn’t much, but I had to take the chance! There was a squeal of tires, the roar of my engine, and I was through and on Braddock Road! I left my antediluvian tormenters gaping in astonishment and bewilderment. I recouped time by setting a new land speed record on Braddock heading West. But it was a near thing, and I know they’re still out there, shuffling….