Grocery Shopping Can Be Hazardous to Your Health

I live in a small town. We are not well known for much. We DO have the Fiddler's Convention which draws a few thousand people to our friendly community once a year to listen to the bluegrass, the country, the folk and the atmosphere of music on the campus of Athens State University.

Because the town is small, we are shocked when odd things occur. This isn't New York City where the odd is actually commonplace, nor is it L.A. where the odd is considered normal. This is Athens, where we set our watches back about 20 years, where the pace is deliberately slower by choice and inclination and where we believe ourselves to be safe.

But yesterday, I realized that danger is where you find it.

I had found a parking slot near the buggy return at Hometown Grocery. The intent was to get in, get out and get gone. Little did I know that my life was in danger from the second my foot hit the pavement.

As I was walking toward the store, I noticed the Knights of Columbus group hawking Tootsie Rolls for their fundraiser to help the disabled. I continued forward with the intent of telling them to keep the Tootsie Roll but take the donation. That's when fate intervened.

The dude in the car was between 90 and 9,000 and should NOT have been driving. NOT AT ALL. He didn't even look back or into his mirrors while he attempted to back out right over me as I was trying to walk into the store. For the record, I was paying attention. When I proceeded forward, NO CARS WERE MOVING... until HE decided to jack his Caddy into gear and leave his slot without so much as a backwards glance. He didn't even look back one single time when he hit me in my right leg with his bumper as I was walking behind him nor did he look back when I hit his trunk with my clipboard and coupons.

I was then that the lady from the Knights of Columbus shouted out "HEY!!! He's about to hit you!!" Yeah, what was your first clue?

He of the clueless driving aged population already DID hit me and he never even looked backwards, side to side or checked his mirrors. His gold trimmed Cadillac just cruised majestically on as if nothing had happened. Which to his mind, of course, didn't. Not a single thing. I hope I scratched his trunk's paint job with the clipboard and that it rusts clean through in the next rainstorm.

I scooped my beating heart up off the ground and kept walking into the store completely forgetting my donation to the disabled and absentmindedly wondering what it was that I was supposed to do in this store. Oh yeah. I was here to buy groceries. How silly of me! Almost murdered, but the groceries needed to be bought.

Why did that seem so strange now?

As I got my buggy and started the trek through the store, I pondered over the singular event. What would have happened had he actually driven over me? Would he have noticed the not inconsequential "bump" that would have been created when his Caddy ground me into the pavement? What if I had been killed while trying to go into Hometown to buy a rump roast for Sunday dinner? Would it be horrific or hilarious? What kind of News Courier coverage would there be? Would anyone attend the funeral or would the giggles of " it could only happen to HER!" prevent their attendance?

It's hard to gauge just how that would have all panned out since I didn't get killed by the old dude and no one was required to come up with an obituary that tenderly pronounced me better than sliced bread, which all of my true friends would know was a lie anyway.

SOME OLD PEOPLE SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED TO DRIVE!!  At the very least, they should have to have a test for their dexterity performed on a regular basis to see just how they are functioning mentally and physically before they are licensed to drive a two ton machine that can kill people in the parking lot of the grocery store.

I realize that taking the keys from someone who is becoming unsafe behind the wheel is hard. I know firsthand. It's worse than hearing you have to have an enema and a quart of 'go lightly'. But for the life of me (and thank God I'm still alive!), I cannot understand why fear of the anger of an elderly person who is learning they are no longer able to drive themselves around trumps the safety of the OTHER people who are dodging, weaving and jumping curbs to avoid being hit by an elderly driver who should not be driving at all!

We complain a lot about teen drivers. They are young, inexperienced and inattentive.

But we need to concentrate a bit of our efforts of complaint towards the elderly drivers. They are old, slow reflexes, inattentive and cocksure of their abilities long after those abilities have jumped the fence never to return again.

Having been left on the sidelines for a good portion of my life through various injuries, surgeries and recoveries, I understand full well why I shouldn't have been behind the wheel during any of those times. I wasn't safe. Yet the elderly don't give a single thought to the fact that they can't see across the living room, are unable to read the newspaper without the highest magnification lens money can buy and are slower than molasses in January in their reflexes. They can drive because by God, they have a license.

Uh. No.

While I'm sure we are all (or mostly all) thankful I wasn't killed in Hometown's parking lot, I can't help but be in fear for the next time I am in a parking area. People of all ages are inattentive. When can I expect that inattention to catch up to me and bring me to the long, dirt nap?

For the record, my favorite color is blue, my favorite hymn is "Dear to the Heart of the Shepherd" and I hate sappy sermons that make people out to be better in death than life ever knew. So when you are planning my funeral from "grocery-cide" please consider those things.

God bless and happy shopping. Be sure and take your crash helmet, football protective gear and a big ol' whacking hockey stick. You never know when you might need to save yourself from some idiot behind the wheel.

867-5309

Do you remember where you were and whom you were with when that number became important to you?

I do.

The group 'Tommy Tutone' changed a generation and influence others that have followed with the slightly off center lyrics penned by Alex Call and Jim Keller. One wonders just what inspired their musing and why it became a phenomenon? It's just a phone number, right?

Years after the success from the song, Alex Call claimed there was neither a "Jenny" nor an actual phone number associated with the rambling words that everyone seemed to know. That kind of made me sad because as I sang the words, I truly pictured some beautiful girl who would answer her phone for the wounded young man who so desperately sang her telephone number seeking her help and aid in his troubled life. Now, I am left with the sad image that he called into the void and received only static for his troubles.

But the singers claimed it WAS a real girl and they had posted her phone number on the bathroom wall as a joke and made hay with the results for years laughing at what they had done. Kinda makes me wonder if Elmo La Teca (of the SLC Maverick gas station bathroom stall fame) ever found Jenny's number and what the results might have been?


That number has created problems in the intervening years for those who have actually HAD it as their phone number. Although no area code is provided and we know that the song originated long before 10-digit dialing became the norm in some locations, one can only imagine the puzzling commentary of the folks on the other end of the line when their version of 867-5309 was dialed and some persistent callers demanded to speak to "Jenny".


Worse yet might have been the actual unsuspecting "Jenny" who haplessly answered from HER real area code and phone number who wondered why she was suddenly getting all of these phone calls from half-drunken love starved barflies that sought her attention and advice just before closing time.

Because I care, here's a video of a live performance of the song.

867-5309

Listen to it and remember... then, randomly pick an area code, dial the number and PLEASE ask for Jenny. Then smile and hang up.

And the Monkey Flips the Switch

We live in a technological age.

Allegedly.

I am discovering the limits of technology in a most personal and frustrating way right now. It has been made painfully obvious to me just how dependent I am upon the Internet to conduct daily business, news, and contact with the outside world.

Despite having DSL and then switching to a higher speed Internet service which should have made our lives better, we now have NEITHER the lower speed, nor the higher speed which was advertised as being “oh so much better”.

Trust me, it’s NOT better. It’s worse.

Instead of having slow and intermittent service, we now have NO service at all of any kind. With Rick back in school and our son Thomas at a school in another state, this service interruption has ground our communications to a standstill. It also hampers my ability to play online Scrabble, a minor consideration, but a consideration nonetheless.

I’ve never felt so ‘Stone Age’ in my life.

In our nation, we have the technology to send men to the moon and communicate with them at distance yet we lack the ability to transact a single simple request for home Internet service that is both reliable and fast. Where have we gone wrong?

For crying out loud, I can go to Burger King and transact a “hold the pickles” order of the   most odd combinations and get exactly what I describe from people who have not yet graduated from high school however this technological flip of the switch is apparently beyond the skill level of the kind people at the phone company who are supposed to be ahead of the curve on their brilliance in all things modern.

I am decidedly NOT amused.

Where are the trained monkeys who led the world in space flight? Ms. Baker, where are you when we need you most? Oh, yeah, you are dead… which probably explains our lack of noise free phone and Internet service since you aren’t here to make certain the proper sequence of switch flipping has occurred. Maybe it’s time to revisit our employment standards and stop discriminating against our simian brethren. They could hardly do worse than their allegedly more evolved relations.

Now, the delightful young man from Bangladesh who is definitely not named Robert assures me that I will not be billed for this ‘service interruption’ and that they are doing all in their power to assist me in this request for help.

May I please have a monkey?

I have bananas to pay for the assistance rendered.

I am currently on hold… the eternal game of patience in suffering. The idea is to see just how long you are willing to put your entire life at a standstill in order to hear someone in a clogged call center in the basement of the Hotel Bangalore reassure me that my concerns matter to them.

I’m not buying it.

They don’t care or they would have fixed this mess the first gazillion times we called begging for help. I realize that they work for Satan, but I’m beginning to see that for most of them, they not only love their work, but they love their boss as well. I can see them standing by the water cooler laughing over how many transfers they can put you through before you lose the will to live. “Yes, Mujibar, I completed 17 transfers through the entire department, through billing and through the customer complaint hotline before ‘accidentally’ cutting off her connection right when we were about to ‘resolve’ her issues!” Hilarity ensues as the backslapping and high-fiving one another gives way to sitar music and dancing until the next call rings in.

Why do we put up with any of this nonsense?

In reality, we put up with it because we don’t really have an alternative to the phone company. They are evil and they know it and they revel in that knowledge because they know that we don’t have any other choices. Even our cellular service goes through Beelzebub’s phone company.

I yearn for the simpler days when hope sprang eternal that one day we would have flying cars, food replicators and endless energy supplies through dilithium crystals. I yearn for the days when we understood that although our relatives are more hirsute than we are, they are actually the ones in charge as scenes from “Planet of the Apes” scroll through my mind. Now, they are saying it could be 7 to 10 more DAYS before they are able to ‘address your issues’. Bull. They have the power. They just don’t want to wield it in my behalf because I lack the ability to choose something better than the demons and imps at the phone company to provide the services I desire to have.

So we are back to square one. Waiting. And waiting some more. The music from “2001: A Space Odyssey” begins to fill my thoughts as I picture simians in jumpsuits driving phone company trucks… and the monkey flips the switch… I just wish he’d get to our particular switch a little faster.

Spamalot

While emptying the spam folder on my email the other day, I realized that I seldom look to see what the spam actually is.

That may or may not be hazardous to my health as there are generally several offers in there which I could use to enhance various body parts that I may or may not own.

Then there are the numerous business opportunities offered to me by the solicitors and intermediaries of various members of the royal houses of Kenya, Nigeria and Zimbabwe, all of which seem to have stored their millions in an offshore account to which I seem to hold the key of release if only I will give them my social security number, bank account number and my dog's shoe size.

They promise they will give me a generous percentage of the bounty if I will comply with their carefully composed request which often contain more grammatical errors than a freshman composition. They also seldom actually KNOW my name which is even more troublesome since they are asking for so much detailed information. Am I actually THE Shelley Merrill they are searching for who has the vast power to return them to their money sucking royal status, or do they want the dude named Shelley Merrill who lives in California?

And since we are asking questions, if the offshore pharmaceutical companies really have my best interests at heart with their various solicitations for products and services they wish me to purchase, shouldn't they care about what gender I am? Confident as I am in the knowledge that Viagra, Cialis and the plethora of lotions and cremes they are hawking are for my own benefit, I have to believe that once again they have me confused with that nice MAN in California who actually owns a penis.

From time to time, Reader's Digest encourages me to enter their sweepstakes virtually guaranteeing me that I AM the grand prize winner with only the mere formality of my participation holding me back from untold millions. I say "Cut to the chase and just give me the loot". Sadly, I appear not to have checked my spam folder to know which little digital stamp I need to transfer to what square to collect the riches held in the initials of S. M. somewhere in Alabama. I am reasonably sure that Sugarbear Mullholland is more than happy with his Reader's Digest check for 75 billion dollars because they sure haven't sent any money to the initials that spell out MY name.

Then of course, there are the various emails from the companies that I no longer wish to hear from but who cannot remove me from their mailing lists because I have forgotten what password I used when I logged into their company website to try and win a trip to Bombay, India. I still get emails encouraging my participation in their latest giveaway promotional that assure me that I might already be a winner.

Spam folders are pretty exciting. When I actually DO check them, I discover that for just a couple of clicks and the paltry sum of $39.95, I can discover who has been searching for me online and do background checks on strangers. I have no interest in either as my plate is full with all the activities that fill my calendar with other people's appointments.

To look at my datebook, you would believe I am the most unhealthy individual walking the planet as a soon to be corpse. There are appointments for doctors, neurologists, cardiologists, oncology specialist, veterinarians and a dental appointment that I will have to reschedule since it falls right on top of a therapy visit that I refuse to miss.

I promise they are not all for me, but they do all require some input from me... it's as if the entire world demands my attention if only to fill out the massive amounts of paperwork that are making some Indian cry somewhere in the world for the loss of forest habitat that I'm causing. Every time an appointment reminder dings, a forest loses another bird on the wing... or something like that.

Spam. It's food but also more. It's the meat product who's name was bogarted by the kind people who now use it as the euphemism for all kinds of digital junk mail. Thomas calls it "stuff posing as meat". I think that definition can be expanded to also include "stuff posing as mail".

The vagaries of life compel me to actually open and check the spam folder from time to time just in case I am missing something I actually need, someone I really want to talk with or some kind of appointment I still have time to attend. Mostly, it's just stuff posing as meaningful. Actually it is far more likely to be stuff pretending to be meaningful than actually being useful to me. Morbid curiosity compels me to check once in a while just to see if I am missing anything. The answer 99.99% of the time is a resounding "NO!".

Meanwhile, I think it's time to have a bite to eat and get ready to cart Jared to the doctor's for his appointment today.

If I use my prep time well, I still have some time to fry up some Spam... I'll save you a slice or two. I promise to email it to you along with a bonus offer for Viagra, the entreaty to save the whales and share your account information with me so that you, too, can be a winner of vast sums of Nigerian currency.