Idle Handmaidens In The Devil's Playground

'Tis Friday, y'all! First Friday of the month. That means all the folks who didn't jump the gun and scurry to do their shopping last week, on the hopes that their first-of-the-month monies were already in the bank, will be rushing to The Devil's Playground to purchase mass quantities today. Right? So it would stand to reason that The Devil would have a full complement of Handmaidens in place to process the influx. Right? Because at The Devil's Playground, you're always next in line? Right? Anybody remember that slogan? Am I making it up? Because I seem to remember that was a promise of the old Devil's Playground, back when old man Devil himself ran it, and not his adult children from the bowels of the state directly below us.

Not that Mrs. Hillbilly Mom is obsessive-compulsive about her wait time. Who's counting, right? Pick up a tabloid and while away the minutes. All 17 of them. Don't mentally slap with a wet noodle the dyed-black-haired lady in the oversize movie star sunglasses, writing a check, explaining about having a different first name than what's printed there, chatting, chatting, sensing the mob behind her grabbing BIC lighters from the last-minute-purchase shelves, readying their torches, then strolling away to her premiere. Yeah. Don't sigh hard enough to knock over Grammy and Grampy Methuselah as they set their produce bag of four plums and 138 other items on the conveyor with their liver-spotted, palsied hands. Don't panic when The Pony finishes driving three dollars' worth of race car games before you even get your first five items rung up, and comes to tell you he's going out to T-Hoe, and quite possibly sees his Valentine and birthday cards you were trying to keep hidden.

Yes, The Devil decreed that only ONE full-service register be open on this Friday morning between the times of 10:25 and 10:42. Oh, and before and after those times as well, but that does not concern me. It might have concerned the TWO twenty-items-or less checkers destined to take the overflow, or the five people in line behind her, but not Mrs. Hillbilly Mom.

So sue me for responding to the stock Handmaiden question of, "Did you find everything okay?" Because I did not. Apparently The Devil is bootlegging Garlic Bologna. There was none to be found on the shelves. Oh, The Devil had twelve stacks of Thick Cut Bologna. And six stacks of Beef Bologna. But nary a Garlic Bologna. I suppose The Devil is now in cahoots with Count Dracula, and does not want to sell items that some might consider offensive.

Farmer H will not be pleased. He will have to continue sneaking sandwiches from the month-old Garlic Bologna that he opened when we still had a perfectly good open bologna. It's not like I'm going to go out of my way to warm anything in the oven or heat it in the microwave for him outside of regular meal times.

The Devil needs to find work for some idle Handmaiden hands.