THE INCONVENIENT
CONVENIENCE
Is there a bigger
lie in the universe than the term "convenience store"? No matter how
thorough the weekly food shopping is done, in a household with young
children there is always the need for a quick trip to the store. I live in
my hometown and things have changed. When I was young, there were Mom & Pop
stores where the owners worked the register and actually concerned
themselves with the concept of service. Now, I have come to not only loathe
but essentially fear a trip to one of the "big chain" convenience stores in
town.
At some point, I began to notice that each trip to the store, usually for
bread or milk, the stuff your always running out of when you have kids, was
beginning to have a recurring-nightmare type quality to it. Invariably I
would enter the store with not a soul in line at the register and return
seconds later with my loaf of bread to a line of twelve people, seemingly
delivered by aliens a millisecond earlier. Wait and wait as the line inches
forward, literally watching myself age in my reflection off the plate glass.
Why am I always behind the guy getting sixteen different scratch tickets?
"Ah, let's see...one Lucky Ducky...one Bingo Scratcho....one Nifty Fifty…".
Why am I always behind an overweight woman in a heavy coat buying three cans
of cat food with eight hundred pennies? She's foraging around in her purse
for coins like a wild boar snorting ants out of a rotten stump. As she drops
each penny on the counter, in my head, I'm hearing a sledgehammer hit a
gong.
In an attempt to out-smart the convenience store, I took to going late at
night. Lots of these places are open 24 hours, a big deal here in New
Hampshire. I would drive down in the wee hours for my gallon of milk. Wait
in the parking lot, engine idling, watching for a break in the action so I
could make my move. I planned my purchase like a Navy Seal, drawing sketches
on paper of my route through the aisles to where the milk is. I knew exactly
which areas to avoid, you know, the late night "hot spots" like the Drake's
& Hostess racks. However, even these pre-dawn assaults come with a price
because the folks who shop this late mostly look like they were just
released from the Arkansas Correctional Facility.
In the end, I returned, a broken man, to my regular-hours visits. Once
again, tolerating the clerks who seem to be mass-manufactured at some third
world factory. Gaunt little guys with greasy hair and beady eyes, illegible
tattoos and heavy nicotine stains between their index and middle fingers.
Young girls with cropped hair, chewing gum...."Did you have any gas, sir?"
"I thought I had gas, but it turned out to be nausea and that was an hour
ago when I was at the back of the line, I feel better now." If I pumped gas,
and she doesn't know it....that's the way it's going to stay. These girls
are always pierced to the max...eyelids, lips, ears, tongue, cheeks,
nose...I 'm wishing I had one of those "Super Magnets" so I could pull her
head down into the counter a couple of times.
I am at peace, though, having resigned myself to the inevitable
deterioration of my sanity at the hands of the "big-chain" stores. Perhaps
someday you will pass me as I pace nervously back and forth, like Dustin
Hoffman in the last scene of Papillon, and if you do, throw me a can of cat
food.