The Good Ole' Boy Grand Slam

I was making deliveries to Lincoln today, and my final stop was a higher end grocery store in South East Lincoln, an area of the city that is fairly wealthy with new money. This particular store is the only place, despite all the Mercedes and BMWs in the parking lot at any given time, in Lincoln where I can find The Ring magazine, a boxing periodical that is bar none some of the best sports writing in the world. The new edition was out, and I snapped it up.

As it was lunch time, and I have forgotten to grab my lunch box on the way out of the house this morning (Hey, it was 3:45 AM-I did grab my coffee cup!) I stopped by the deli section, intending to buy a sandwich or something. Instead, I noticed that had a single self container of cold chicken, so I went for that. Passing through the fruit section, they had some cut up fruit in Saran wrap, so I bought that. Finally, I procured a drink from the fridge unit in front of the cash register.

There was a little lady in front of me buying some things with her 43 coupons. Being a large guy who tends to tower over little, old ladies, I have found it is courteous for me to get the little bar on the black cashier lane moving counter (do those things have a name?), put my items on it, and simply stare up at the ceiling or at the candy bars or magazines and not make eye contact with the cashier or person in front me. I do this because, as I tend to unintentionally loom over people, they get freaked out that I am trying to steal their credit card information or PIN numbers or something.

As I was staring intently at the Mr. Goodbars in the hopes of avoiding the National Exaggerator's fixation on all the Kardashian women "being preggers," I noticed the lady in front of me eyeing me strangely. Thinking it was not out of the ordinary, I switched tactics and became scanning the candy bars ever more intently in the hopes of finding a Zero bar. (I mean, white chocolate and nougat. Why aren't those found in every store?) Finally the cashier got through scanning the aforementioned 43 coupons, and the lady then proceeded to count out the 352 unmarked pennies to pay for what little she had not managed to rip the store off of.  She finally waddled away with once last look back at me that was somewhere in between a a goodbye leer and a Statler and Waldorf style harrumph. Sadly, I still had not found that Zero bar before she left.

The scrolling cashier counter brought up my goodies to the cashier. At this point I knew something was odd because the cashier looked at my stuff, looked at me literally down her nose, then looked back at my stuff before finally committing to ringing it up after what seemed to be an awkward pause.

During this pause, I finally realized why I had become the subject of such strict scrutiny. To my abjectly horrified bemusement, I realized that I had managed by hungry happenstance to purchase the Granddaddy of all Good Ole' Boy Grand Slams: a boxing magazine, a Dr. Pepper, fried chicken, and watermelon.

My only thought: If only they'd had boiled peanuts...

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