A Quick Jaunt

What should have been a quick jaunt to the grocery and pharmacy somehow turned into a series of unfortunate events where Jude Law could narrate and you’d laugh, cry, shake your head, and say things like, “Gracious me! What hullabaloo!”
Here’s how it went down…and if at some point during the tale you notice a point where I messed up and should have handled the situation differently, make a note and let me know.

I needed to go to the grocery store and the pharmacy, which are both in the same part of town and only five minutes from my home. I hopped in my sporty, fuel efficient, ’95 Civic and headed toward the target zone. As I approached Main St., I saw the first in a series of signs directing people toward Sugarcreek, Ohio’s annual “Fabulous Fifties Fling”. This was a problem. The downtown area would be thronging with tourists, antique cars, carneys, and Golden Buckeye Card-holders. The streets would be blocked off in unpredictable patterns, which meant detouring, and parking would not be at all pleasant. I at once considered aborting the mission; however, my 22 month old milk-aholic would have been distressed without her dairy fix, and the pharmacy was closed on Sundays so this was the only chance until Monday evening. So I made the decision to proceed…

It became evident that I would not be able to park very near the pharmacy, which meant that I had to go there first; otherwise the milk would curdle due to the thermonuclear heat. After circumnavigating the blocked off portions of town, I found an area by some railroad tracks where I could park about a quarter mile from the pharmacy. Truly the best I could do. Oh, and I was wearing flip-flops; an additional nuisance because the first portion of my little hike was over double tracks, through dirty gravel, snakes, and thorny weeds. I strolled through the aptly named “Fabulous Fifties Fling” and make it to the pharmacy (my first objective).

I tell the nice lady at the desk that I need a refill. Nice lady says, “Ok, but I’m not sure how long it will take because our computers aren’t working right.”
I ask nice lady, “Could you give me an estimate – just a ballpark guess?”
Nice lady says, “No.”
“No?”
“No.”

{I paused to tactfully formulate my response so as not to sound like I have a surly attitude, which I do at this point.}
I ask, “Do you think it will take more or less than three hours?”
“Oh. It won’t take that long!”
“Ok…Do you think it will take more or less than 15 minutes.”
“It will definitely take longer than 15 minutes.”
“I see. So do you think it will take more or less than two hours?”
At this point she catches on to my ploys and tells me it probably would take an hour. As I exited, I puzzled over why she didn’t tell me that to begin with.

I then had a few things to consider. Should I just go ahead and get the groceries and take my chances with warm milk? How much could I trust the nice lady’s estimation? I didn’t really feel like participating in the “Fabulous Fifties Fling”. Note that back in the fifties it was just called the ‘Fabulous Fling’. I decided to flip-flop back over the snakes and railroad tracks. I got in my car and meandered over to IGA.

I took my time at the grocery store because I had an hour to kill. The only hitch I ran into was that the Velveeta shredded cheese my wife had asked for was sold out. Life goes on. I kicked around the idea of homemade General Tso’s Chicken, but decided it may be too hard to pull off without a deep fryer and Chinese immigrant to help prepare it. I checked out, adding forty cents to my Discover cash-back bonus, got in my car and headed back toward the railroad tracks.
After my third romp through the cacti, pythons, and pistons, I found my prescription ready and waiting (it only took an hour). I paid for the drugs and for a final time made the trek back to the tracks.

As I retraced my circumnavigation of the downtown area, I wondered why a town with a large Amish community makes a fuss over old cars. There's horse-drawn buggies all over the place. If you want antiquity…why settle for 20th century? Then, around the time John Mayer had repeated, “Say what you need to say” for the zillionth time in that overplayed radio hit, the car directly in front of me rear ended the car directly in front of it, ergo trapping me between them and the traffic behind me.

Sometime later I managed a U-turn, a wider detour, and no more unfortunate events. My quick jaunt had come to a merciful end.

It floats around. It's gotta land somewhere. I was in the path of the tornado.
-Andy Dufresne, The Shawshank Redemption

Beware of Fruit Cocktail

With chicken you watch out for bones. With watermelon you watch out for seeds. With soup you watch out for hot. But fruit cocktail is the most dangerous. The reason is that the enemy does NOT meet you in the open. We know chicken has bones so we're careful and we learn to avoid them. You anticipate watermelon seeds in each bite so you know you can't chomp and gulp (unless you want watermelons growing in your tummy). And the steaming bowl of soup might as well have a flashing sign above it saying, "Caution: Contents are hot and will hurt you if you put them in your mouth!" But the fruit cocktail is sneaky. There are no warnings, and experience really doesn't help.

Looks good, doesn't it? Don't be fooled by appearances. A dangerous foe lies beneath the festive surface.

Do you know what I'm talking about? It's the surprise pieces of wood fragments that tend to gravitate toward the pears or peaches. You spoon some fruit juiciness into your mouth, chew, swallow, and all is well, but that all changes on spoonful #7. Your molars come to a violent halt and you have to decide whether to finger through the fruity slime in your mouth or just swallow a small hunk of wood and risk esophageal splinters.

Now do you know what I'm talking about? If you don't, you've been chowing on rich people fruit cocktail or something. This is something that has always bothered me. The wood chips are probably cores that slipped by the expungers and decided to crash the party. I'd say 50% of the time you could spot one before putting it in your mouth but this would require delicate examination of each piece of fruit. The other 50% are undetectable until your bicuspids suddenly become sawmills. Although they tend to hide in the peaches and pears, they occasionally stick to grapes and cherries. (Pineapples are safe.)

Lately I've been avoiding fruit cocktail. It's just not worth it.