Welcome to our regular Saturday feature “What Aggravates Me” by Comedian John Knight
People tend to be nicer to each other around the holidays. It may have to do with the whole Christmas spirit thing or it could be from what was implanted in our brains as children.
“Be good. Santa’s watching.”
Parents always used that ploy to get us to behave in the month before Christmas. No sense trying to use it in July. We still had plenty of time to recover and get back in his good graces.
“He sees you when you’re sleeping.”
I was pretty much awake until Christmas after hearing that. It’s tough enough being a child and now I find out there’s a fat guy in a bright red suit that gets his kicks watching me sleep.
Of course todays parents have gone much farther. Now we have “Elf on the Shelf.” A plastic elf that moves from place to place and room to room to spy on children. So now it’s not just Santa watching somehow from the North Pole. No, we now have proof that somebody is breaking and entering the home each night to relocate some sort of tracking device. I should have been a psychiatrist, that’s where the money is.
I was in a good mood, for me anyway, as I was checking out of my local Giant Eagle. I was using the self-checkout lane and had just scanned my last item. As I pushed my cart forward, the idiot behind me was trying to scan his advantage card. This was impossible since I had yet to pay. I said,
“Can I finish?”
He just said,
“Thorry.”
I’m not making fun of a speech impediment. It’s just the way he said it, like a pompous ass. I wanted to make a whole issue out of it, but its Christmas after all.
I paid for my groceries and started to bag them. I didn’t have the first item put away when moron’s carton of chocolate milk came rolling my way.
“Thorry.”
“If you were really thorry Sylvester, there wouldn’t be a second chocolate milk mixing in with my groceries, now would there?”
I was thinking of trying an experiment to see if a person could drink milk through the opposite end. But, it’s Christmas after all.
Keeping my composure, I looked for the bar to separate the groceries’. When I couldn’t find one, I angrily pushed the milk up the conveyor belt toward the idiot. It didn’t faze him in the least. He just continued to scan his items.
His wife was able to notice there was a problem. She began to pick up his items from the belt and hold on to them. She had cartons of milk under each arm and her hands were filling up with can goods. I suppose that was easier than telling her husband to stop for a minute while I finished bagging.
It was like watching an old “Lucy” episode as he kept scanning and she kept picking them up. I have to admit that I was really taking my time with bagging. I was practically in slow motion at this point. It was quite a show and I couldn’t believe neither of them realized how rude they were being. I began to put each of my items into their own individual bag.
The wife was sweating as she was running out of space to hold things. I think the husband noticed I was doing this on purpose by the way he was looking at me. I had to say something,
“Thorry.”
One of the chocolate milks fell from under the wife’s arm and exploded on the floor. I put the last of my groceries in the cart and left the store laughing. I feel they learned a valuable lesson that day and I could have been much tougher on them. But, it’s Christmas after all.
Follow John on Twitter @jknight841
