Sunday, October 16, 2011

Why I Don't Go Out in Public Much Part Three

This is getting ridiculous, and, furthermore, ricockulous.

So, once again, I'm at Panera Bread...

You'd think I'd learn my lesson, but no. I don't know why I keep going back there. I don't drink coffee. I'm not attracted to any woman that works there. I don't have any sort of bouts of nirvana-esque clarity. So, why do I keep going there? Hell, I don't know.

Anyway...

I'm waiting in line. There's an older woman in front of me. And by "older" I mean "fucking old". She's a crone. A craggy looking humanoid from a bygone era. Anyway, she orders a tea. The guy behind the counter tells her the total and she starts looking through her purse for her debit card.

And she looks.

And she looks.

And she looks.

This goes on - I shit you negative - for five minutes.

You're probably thinking, "No, it didn't! You're exaggerating, asshole!"

If it were an average day, I would say you're right. But not today. No. It took her five minutes. You wanna know how I know that?

I FUCKING TIMED HER!

I was patient for a minute. Hostile for the second minute. For the remaining three, I decided to stand there just to see how long it was going to take her to find her goddamn card. Some people rubberneck at trainwrecks. I rubberneck at human trainwrecks.

So, as Grandma Moses finally comes to the conclusion that St. Anthony is not going to come out of the fucking sky and place her fucking card in her purse, she decides it's in her best interest to check her pants pocket.

GUESS WHAT SHE FINDS!?!?

Her card.

She pays - finally - and I go up to the counter. The young-ish bloke at the register whispers, "Sorry about the wait." I nod. "What can I get ya?" he asks.

I clear my parched throat and say, "I'll take a small fountain drink a DVD copy of 'Logan's Run' please."

He almost looses it, but he keeps his composure.



But the fun doesn't end there, no, no, no.

I take a seat and start searching through the internet. A little girl walks over to where I'm sitting. Comes closer. Closer. And then tries to crawl into my fucking lap!

"Get away, would you!" I yell at the kid.

I was waiting for Chris Hanson to come out from around the corner!

I would be a lot more tolerant if the kid was a toddler, but she looked to be about 7 or 8!

I look over and her mother is just sitting there reading the damn paper.

"Excuse me!"

She looks up, her eyes as lost and as empty as a retarded boy trying to absorb the Schrodinger's Cat hypothesis. (Look it up.)

"Is this your kid?!"

"Yeah."

"Could you please tell her not to tr and crawl into the laps of strangers?!"

"Oh. Okay. Ellie, come here."

The kid goes over to her mother, but not for long. A few minutes later, she goes over to a group of teenagers trying to do homework. They are more forgiving than I. They let her hang around. So the kid starts goofing off in the booth and she does this thing where she slides, head first, to the floor. The buckle of her little belt catches on the corner of the booth and her fucking pants fall down!

There she is, on the floor of Panera Bread, bare-assed, without a care in the fucking world, and her mother, the human-bovine that she is, lost in the "Family Circus" comic or the colorful array of coupons.

The kid pulls her pants up. I close my laptop. The mother breathes through her mouth. I get up and leave and swear to myself that I'm never going back again.

But, like an abused housewife, I'll be back. At least I can admit it to myself.

But when I go back, I won't hope for fresh food, a clean restroom, or a friendly wait staff. I don't anticipate that the soup will be good, that the soft drinks will be bubbly, that the floors will be swept. No. The only thing I can hope for is that, next time, no attempted reverse-pedophilia will take place, nor will I have to wait in line behind a person who's lived way past the point of their expiration date.

That's all.

So, the next time you're trapped in line or you hear an obnoxious kid getting on your nerves, please think of me. I hope you smile, because I didn't.