After A Case Of Mrs. Hillbilly Mom, Nobody Can Stay On Their Feet

I'm not used to it anymore. Can't take the shunning. It was easy when I was running a tight ship in Newmentia. Shunning was expected. And that's the way it should be. Mrs. HM had no desire to be buddy-buddy with her charges. So what if her cronies at the Semi Weekly Meetings of the Newmentia Lunch Time Think Tank gave her the side-eye? She had her own chair, by cracky! A place where she belonged. Not so these days.

I stopped by Save A Lot yesterday morning to pick up a few things. Some onions and potatoes and cabbage and milk and chili dog sauce and shrimp and salsa. Not that much, really. It all fit in the child seat of my old metal cart. Save A Lot has those newer red plastic carts, but I find them unwieldy. And the handle is too high to comfortably use one as a walker.

It didn't take me long to gather my goods. I know where everything is. I make my list accordingly. When I got to the checkout, I saw that the cashier was the coal-black coiffed Methuselah's Grandaughter. She's a tiny old woman who used to be really friendly to me. But lately she has been puttering around taking a smoke break, or gathering carts when I am in the store, and I get the young girls who treat ringing up my groceries like a JOB!

There was one lady ahead of me, her stuff already on the conveyor being scanned. I pushed my walker/cart in line behind her. WELL! Methuselah's Granddaughter looked up at me and said, "She can help you on Lane Two." THEN she picked up the microphone and said, "Debbie to the front to check."

Okay. I get it. I was persona non grata! Sweet Gummi Mary! I only had a smattering of purchases. It's not like I had a daycare's worth of milk gallons and crates of animal cookies and jars of applesauce. Nor did I have a 100-lb bag of dog food. It was easy stuff. And not much of it. Why did Methuselah's Granddaughter have to pawn me off like that?

Debbie came up front and was very polite to me. She's almost as old as MG, She could be Methuselah's great grand-niece. She has a frizzy perm of nondescript color, and she's chubby like a grandma. I bear her no ill will, though I was still smarting from rejection at the arthritic claws of MG. In protest, after unloading my groceries from the cart and into the back of T-Hoe...I put that cart in the cart corral! I showed HER! I usually push it back into the store. Not this time. Take THAT, Methuselah's Granddaughter!

From there I headed for the credit union and the post office, and then to my bank. Nothing off-putting befell me at the first two. But the bank was another story. I pulled into the farthest drive-thru lane to make two deposits. I had taken cash out of each of The Pony's and the #1 Son's college accounts, because they each had used my credit cart to make a textbook purchase due to The Pony's debit cart not working on a website, and #1 having to obtain a book from Amazon.

My bank is really slow lately. I waited 15 minutes there a couple weeks ago, with only one car ahead of me. So when I saw that far lane open, I cruised right in and grabbed my two envelopes of cash. I deposit them separately for record keeping purposes. I had to hurry and jam those envelopes in the canister, because a car at the other working drive-thru lane had just pulled out, and a car behind it was pulling forward. I had to beat that one! And I did. My canister was whooshing through the tube before that guy had his back on the launcher.

"Hello. I'll be with you in a moment."

That teller wench had greeted the other guy! And I was first! I had wanted to explain that there was change in each envelope, and two separate deposits. Nope. I seethed. Turned up my SiriusXM 70s. Must have been the tail-end of the 70s, because it was Donna Summer disco. Time ticked. After 10 minutes, I heard a WHOOSH. My canister came back with two receipts. Still no talk from the teller wench. I guess she figured it out. So much for a greeting. Then she said, "Is there anything else?" Like I was BOTHERING her! I said no, and wished I had brought all coins. She had kept my envelopes, too! They ALWAYS give back the envelopes. Good thing I hadn't written the boys names on them or anything.

Seriously. Am I THAT unpleasant? Do I stink? (right now I'm sniffing my own armpit and breathing into my palm) Could that teller wench smell me through the drive-thru tube? I'd rather just be invisible than actively avoided.

From there I headed to that new convenience store that finally got constructed on the corner where I used to turn to go to Newmentia every morning. The little old lady there was polite enough. She took my two lottery winners and bent over to get my new scratchers from the case. Then she stood up and said, "Whew! I almost blacked out!" Oh, come ON! It couldn't be my smell...could it? I'm not generally a stinker. I take a shower every day before I head to town. Why were people reacting to me like this? I don't think I'll ever know. It was just one of those not-meshing kind of days.

Let the record show that the lottery lady DID have some bruising on the back of her hand. Like where an IV might be taped down in the hospital. And their tickets are way down low. So maybe she got a head rush when she stood back up. And maybe she'd been sick, and was dehydrated. Maybe I was just on the defensive after being shunned twice already.

But I have a tale of Diet Coke redemption for tomorrow!