I needed chocolate cake today. Rowan and I played Takoma PORCH, then my friend Gwen and I just wandered Takoma Park, grabbed linner (lunch dinner, silly!), wandered some more, shopped – and then headed home… and on the way the CRAVING set in. Chocolate cake.
I needed chocolate cake. I’d just had seaweed and a hot dog. Chocolate cake.
So – Safeway on the way home. I roll in, thinking the parking lot was looking pretty benign, not realizing that the interior was, of course, PACKED. It’s okay. I just needed chocolate cake. Despite just needing chocolate cake, I nabbed a basket because I didn’t want to walk around Safeway JUST holding chocolate cake. I see that the lines are kind of absurd so I figure I’ll grab my cake and hop in the self-checkout aisle – which I NEVER do – because I like my cash register peeps AND I think that the automation of certain industries is accelerating the oncoming employment Apocalypse and… okay, don’t get me started.
Anywho – immediately one of the four self-checkout thingies goes under. Out of service. Flatlined. The other three are occupied, as they invariably are, by people who have never actually used them before, have forgotten an item, can’t find their money, can’t identify their money… and / or are being carded for their myriad pharmaceuticals. The line builds. The man ahead of me who has hopes of purchasing a massive bag of charcoal grows fatigued and sets it down. A couple tries to get in line in FRONT of us. Small altercation. Charcoal guy is firm so I don’t have to be.
FINALLY – two devices are free simultaneously. I let a woman go ahead of me because she’s got a LOT of stuff and she’s struggling under all of it… I figure it’s a good deed to let her get her pile to bags asap – and then charcoal realizes the sale price doesn’t apply without a Safeway card, so I let him use mine…. And then on the way out a disabled woman is struggling because the cords for the scooters are all tangled, so I pause on the way out to sort THAT out.
Now I have earned my chocolate cake, and guiltlessly I return to my abode, load all my crap in doors… and figure I wanted to tell my tale. Because I’m like that. And sometimes I need chocolate cake.
