Some will attest that I am already there. I certainly give ample evidence… I forget things. I stop in the middle of a long yet eloquent sentence and get distracted by a random thought about pickles, buttons on my shirt, or molecules of air wafting through the gap in your teeth, or… well… damnit I forget. Sometimes I can already feel sanity slipping away, not overall, but in a few brief moments where I am caused to wonder if my brain is undergoing liquifaction. It gets slippery in there sometimes. In contrast, there are the moments where I believe myself to be in a room full of the insane. I am the lone competent mind among the throng of rabidly caffinated hordes – all having lost their faculties, or what few they were born with. Granted, the latter tends to occur almost exclusively in retail situations. The horror. The horror.
Last week I wandered into the “Real Canadian Superstore”. The name of this store alone makes me wonder sometimes. It is a giant warehouse full of garish lights, bright colors, and all the ambience of a small closet constructed of burning omlettes. However, their prices are good, and I am loathe to pay 5 bucks for a loaf of bread at UnSafeway (TM) when I can get it at RCS for under 2. I am in the 12 items or less lineup. I like linups even more than I like forgetting 2 of the 3 points I just came up to you to chat about, so the 12 items or less line and I get along nicely. Those “other” linups have people who actually buy a lot of things, and I am not one of those people, nor do I want to be behind those people in line. I’ve got the usual items, plus one item that fits into a new thing im trying. Get your usual stuff (and its VERY usual), but get one item with each trip that you have not tried before. This has been largely successful so far, with a few items that have… well, been interesting. So I am standing there in the linup, kicking my basket of loot along in front of me… and am getting annoyed by the old lady behind me. She is one of those people who will stand RIGHT behind you in a linup. You take a step back even slightly, and you collide with your lineup tailgater. I did this a few times accidentally, where I apologized. Then I did it a few more times on purpose, just a slight step back, a collision. This is usual in linups, not rare enough to gather much attention, not to say I understand. I took note that all this lady was buying was 3 jars of pickles. No name brand pickles. Dill.
This is where my jacket comes in.
Next thing I know – she is rubbing the nail of her index finger on my jacket. Right around my left shoulder blade. I turned around, sort of smiled and asked if there was anything on my jacket. She shook her head and gave a big grin. Whatever… I turned back to the line ahead of me. She did it again. Squip! squip!squipsquipsquipsquipsquipsquip… I asked her to stop, at which point she smiled and redoubled her efforts. I asked the woman behind her if she was with her, and alas, the JacketPicker(TM) was acting alone. The woman behind her asked her to leave me alone but alas, this also had no effect. All queries into the behavior resulted in a redoubling of her efforts and a big big smile. Perhaps there is a lesson in that smile – crazy is not necessarily unhappy. So we ignored her. Squip squip squipsquipsquipsquipsquipsquip… Sigh… at least she wasn’t hitting me.
Life has a way of reminding you what you are forgetting. Sometimes it comes in the form of a harsh kick in the ass, sometimes it is gentle. A reminder that Im not really that crazy at all was fairly subtle – Im not picking at other people’s jackets just yet. I do buy pickles though. Dill pickles. Hmmm….