THREE OBSERVATIONS FROM A TRIP TO COSTCO

1-Once a bully, always a bully! A large, belligerent looking woman with a Dutch Boy haircut followed me into the warehouse. She snatched a cart and tailed me so closely that if I had stopped, she would have rammed me. She continued her pursuit as I turned into the book aisle. If I stopped, she stopped. If I moved, she moved, keeping her cart mere inches from my backside. She didn’t appear to even be looking at the books. Apparently her purpose was to keep me moving along. Perhaps she was the self-appointed book aisle monitor: “Just grab one as you glide past, folks! No stopping or browsing permitted.” Never mind that you might end up with a cookbook when you wanted an atlas! Well, anyone who knows me will realize that she was “messin’ with the wrong guy!” I stood my ground in front of the paperbacks and leisurely perused several of them while she fumed and fidgeted. I looked around to make sure I was not blocking her way. There were no other people nearby and she could have easily gone around. When I was finished, I moved on and she moved on right behind me, never showing a modicum of interest in the books in that area. She seemed motivated entirely by the desire to intimidate. I pitied her hapless classmates of yesteryear, as I envisioned a flashback of her as a tyrannical fifth grader terrorizing the playground. The low self-esteem that often spawns such bizarre behavior made me realize I should pity her also.

2- I came upon one shoe lying alone and abandoned in the middle of the condiment aisle. The sight of this caused me to reflect on what I call the “Lone Shoe Mystery.” I frequently notice a solitary shoe lying in the middle of the road. Doesn’t it seem rather odd for someone to be driving along when all at once one of his or her shoes disappears out the car window? And why does it seem to happen so often? Could it be Gremlins? If you are watchful the next time you are driving, you will likely see at least one stray shoe somewhere on your route. I wonder if these people arrive at their destinations and exclaim, “Great Scott, I could have sworn I left home with both shoes!” Quinton has a box of five or six spouseless shoes on a shelf in the garage and no idea where their mates might be. I suspect that those vagabond shoes are out there at this very moment littering the streets. Perhaps the whole shoe mystery could have been solved if I had rounded the bend into that aisle moments sooner and actually witnessed the person’s shoe fall off as he put a jar of mayonnaise into the cart, and then limped along to the pickles, oblivious to the fact that something was missing!

3-It was one-thirty in the afternoon when I entered Costco. I had eaten a very meager breakfast, no lunch, and I was ravenous. I decided I would take advantage of the tasty samples handed out in the food section. While this was admittedly not the healthiest meal of my life, here is what I had: One bite of white cupcake with gooey frosting, a Tablespoonful of tortellini with cheese sauce, one small slice of spicy sausage, a sip of Naked Juice, and two other things in tiny white cups that I cannot remember. Then I slipped back to the bakery section for another bite of cupcake, hoping the demo lady wouldn’t remember me. Before leaving the store I bought a bottle of water from the vending machine and downed it on the way home. Now this is the honest truth…20 minutes later I felt stuffed!! After drinking the water, I was full and didn’t feel the temptation to eat another thing all the way till dinnertime. My epiphany for the day was that I could eat much less, expand it by drinking lots of water, and not even approach starvation. The part of our brain that tells us we are full doesn’t kick in until about 20 minutes after we stop eating. By then, if we have continued to shovel it in just because it still tastes good, we will be chomping antacids by the handful. I also realized that in that 20 minute interval I could have polished off the entire box of cupcakes, (if the demo lady hadn’t been looking) and the management would have had to wheel me to my car on one of those big flat bed carts!