Londonderry News

I’m not sure what about her first caught my eye.  She was the typical “little old lady” – a short, thin woman, about 80 years young, with grayish white hair and a pair of those cat’s eyes glasses more commonly worn in the 1950s.  She was slowly and methodically pushing her shopping cart up and down each aisle, adding items until it was about half full.  Probably enough groceries to last her a month, I surmised.

At the end of her shopping escapade, she pulled the cart over to the end of an aisle in front of the cash registers.  She then began unloading a dozen or so items into each of two orange shopping baskets – the ones reserved for shoppers who have only a few purchases.  She left another dozen items in the shopping cart and wheeled everything over to the Ten Items or Less register.  Her movements became quicker now and I could see what she was up to.  This was a riot.

She handed one of the orange baskets off to a gentleman in front of her, a guy who looked like an elderly Uncle Fester from the Addams Family.  He nonchalantly took the basket and unloaded his 10-items-or-so onto the conveyor belt, then placed one of those dividers on the belt right behind his stuff.  The elderly woman then began unloading the items from her shopping cart onto the conveyor, as Fester paid for his ten-items-or-less which, when bagged, he placed in the woman’s shopping cart.

He then grabbed the second orange basket, went behind the woman, and quietly put that load of groceries on the conveyor.  Meanwhile, she paid for her batch with a smile and pushed the cart just past the register, waiting for him to pay for his second load.  All this took place pretty smoothly, as the line of shoppers with a few items each continued to grow behind this spectacle.  And the teenage cashier, not really knowing how to handle this, just kept pumping the same elderly couple through the line.

Then our Bonnie-and-Clyde-of-the-Supermarket packed all three piles of their groceries into that shopping cart and headed for the door, confident, I suppose, that they had legitimately gone through the line three times with ten items or less.  Everyone else just stood there, with mouths agape.  Until I began to laugh.  Then they all did.  And normality returned to the Ten Items or Less line, as we all scrambled to make up the lost time.

This was a funny scenario to watch.  And my guess is it takes place at least twice a month at that supermarket, as our modern-day Bonnie and Clyde repeatedly return to the scene.  It’s unique scenarios like this that keep us all entertained, if not patiently so, as we find ourselves waiting in line.

I can’t say the same for most other lines in which we wait.  Traffic jams on the highway don’t offer the same entertainment value. You can only watch so many people around you thoughtfully picking their noses and singing to themselves, as a thousand motorists wait in line while three cop cars, two fire engines, and an ambulance handle a fender bender  – or worse – two miles up the road.  All because some idiot changed lanes without looking, and sideswiped his fellow motorist.

And you don’t see the same entertainment as you wait in line at the mall at 5 a.m. on any given Saturday between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  A line that wraps twice around the parking lot and up and down every aisle of every store in the place.  Except maybe the mattress store – not a lot of folks wrap mattresses to place under the Christmas tree.  Even an early visit from Santa probably wouldn’t satisfy the happy people waiting in a line like that during the Season of Joy…

Ever had to wait in line at one of the large amusement parks like DisneyWorld or Six Flags?  It’s not much fun waiting for an hour in a line that snakes up and down, back and forth, for miles, before you get on a ride that lasts thirty seconds.  Oh, you get to see the same people every other aisle as the line snakes past them a dozen times.  Till – ha ha – they get on the amusement ride twenty minutes before you do.  You could exchange pictures of your kids with them at each pass – or maybe even exchange the kids, just for variety’s sake.  If you cross paths an even number of times, you’ll even get your kids back.  But that’s about all the amusement you’ll find standing in line at an amusement park.

And there are other lines in which we find ourselves waiting for a long time.  Like the bank – it always seems to be a Thursday when you need that twenty bucks for a haircut.  As you wait behind all those workers cashing their weekly paychecks.  Or the gas station, where you wait for a tank of gas that cost half as much a week earlier.  You may even sit so long in your doctor’s waiting room that you start worrying about what diseases everyone around you might have – and whether you could catch any of them.

So maybe, on second thought, we really do need a few more of those supermarket Bonnie and Clyde folks to entertain us as we stand in all these lines.  It’s better than repeatedly counting the ceiling tiles at the DMV while waiting to renew your driver’s license.   Or picking the dog’s hair off your dress, as you wait for the kids’ school bus.  After all, there’s really no reason to just wait…is there?

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