People That Bother Me:
One year and five months from now I will be 80 years old, I was born in 1926, I am old.
Most old people are a pain in the ass, they hobble around, many wear diapers, they have no teeth, their toenails turn chalky, they have veins sticking out everywhere, they watch Lawrence Welk, they smile at everybody, even strangers, they have Cats, the ones in Florida are all drunks. When the old people can’t hear what your saying they just look at you and grin, when they drive their little cars all you can see of them is the top of their head and after “one” cocktail they like to get together and sing “Down By The Old Mill Stream”. They love Polyester Pants. Tuesday Is Senior Citizens Day. If it’s Tuesday, be careful in the parking lot, one of their favorite pastimes is driving their cars through store windows.
I’m obsessed with Supermarkets, I see strange things there, I see strange people there, you too can see strange things there, if you look for them, watch people, you will be amazed at all the imbeciles and morons you see in the Supermarket.
Now, I will get to the point, “shopping with these old bastards”. Have you ever noticed how most people look out at the ocean when they are standing on the boardwalk and there is a railing? They usually fold their arms and rest them on the top of the railing as they gaze out to sea.
Well now, the next time you food shop watch some of these “old folks”, after selecting their shopping cart, putting their cane in the cart, then turning and smiling at anybody that happens to glance at them, they fold their skinny wrinkled blotched arms, they lean forward and place their folded skinny wrinkled blotched arms on the handle, they don’t push the cart with their hands, they push the cart with their folded skinny wrinkled blotched arms, they have to bend over to do this, so now they are all bent over pushing the cart with their folded skinny wrinkled blotched arms, they are still smiling.
Doing this, it then takes them about twenty minutes to walk ten feet. (They shuffle and crawl)
As I said earlier, I am 78½ years old, when I shop, I get my cart, I put my cane in the cart, I don’t smile at anybody, I don’t know these damn people and I have no intention of smiling at them, I don’t even look at them, I hate them.
I push the cart with my hands. I don’t push the cart with my folded skinny wrinkled “freckled” arms. (I have Red hair, I don’t have blotches, I have freckles)
Old people aren’t my only problem in the supermarket:
Have you ever seen pictures on the Discovery Channel of a Shark swimming along and there are two or three little fishes hanging right at their sides and they go everywhere with the Shark. Well when I shop it always seems that the minute I enter the store I “pick up” one or two people just like this, they usually come in “packs” “family members” sometimes they have a couple of “snot nosed” squalling brats with them, these people seem to be everywhere I want to go, I will try to get rid of them, I will go in the opposite direction from them, if they go down one aisle I will go down another, for a few minutes I feel safe, I forget them, then, BANG, here they are right beside me, sometimes touching my body or my cart. It often seems to me that God has assigned these people to make my life miserable while I am in this store.
I have just entered the store, “oh boy” (the shark people haven’t found me yet) my wife knows they will pop up somewhere because she is just looking at me and grinning, she loves to watch them aggravate me.
What I am dealing with now though is the old hag in front of me pushing her cart with her arms, she is barely moving, one slow crawling step at a time, her old head is going from side to side, she is smiling at everybody she can see, then she stops, “Ah Ha, Jesus Christ”, right in the middle of the aisle, she is now trying to read the small print on a box of cereal from eight feet away, she stays in the middle of the aisle, she is hypnotized by a box of Corn Flakes, she wont push her cart to the side so people can get by, she just remains motionless, blocking the whole aisle. Her folded arms are still on the cart and she is bent over so far that her old head is almost in the basket.
If I were to scream at her “Hey Get Out Of The Way You Old Bastard” she would just look at me and smile. So, I wait.
Now vivid visions (in color) go through my head as I look at her backside, I can just picture myself ramming my cart into her decrepit old frame, I can see her falling to the floor, I picture her false teeth flying down the aisle, I can see her dark brown flannel underwear and her rolled up woolen stockings as she is thrashing around on the floor, I can hear her screaming, I start smiling, my wife comes up and throws something in the cart and she says, “what are you laughing at” I reply, “nothing”.
Finally, after what seems like a month, the old bitch decides she doesn’t want any cereal, I say to myself, “what the hell was she reading on the cereal”, I never should have come down this aisle.
Now my wife has vanished, she can be right beside me, then I will look at something for two seconds, I will turn to speak to her and she’s gone, vanished into thin air, without a sound.
Well at least I am rid of the old women; I will keep an eye open for her though.
I think I’ll buy some bacon, I am now looking at bacon, reading the expiration date, then, holy Jesus, I can feel it, my eyes start to twitch, they have found me, they are standing right next to me “the shark people” and they want “my bacon”, these are the rotten wretched people that will torment me until I leave the store, no matter what I do to avoid them, “they will be there”, oh dear Jesus H Christ.
Is it just me, do any of you reading this have a problem with someone in a store that you just can’t seem to get rid of, no matter what you do the terrible things are right there with you. Keep this in mind on your next shopping trip; maybe you just haven’t noticed them. Or, maybe I have a mental problem.
I throw my bacon back, I will circle around to get behind them, and if I can keep them in front of me I will be safer. The people I run into like this at the store seem to be able to sense what I want to buy, then they will go directly to where I am headed and then they just stand there, sometimes they will pick an item up and they both will examine it, read it and then talk it over between themselves, they will discuss buying a jar of peanut butter as though they were buying a new car. I can’t get at the peanut butter so I leave, then they leave, I go around and come back up the aisle and there they are, they came back also, for a second look at the one damn jar of peanut butter. God doesn’t want me to have that peanut butter.
Today it is a man and a women, they are funny looking people, they look at each other as though they hate each others guts, they have a 6 yr old monster with them, he runs and he grabs everything he can reach, and throws it on the floor, the female adult is constantly screaming at him, this “little fella” has a large forehead, his eyes are about a foot apart, he has a crew cut, he has two large openings in the middle of his face which I assume are his nostrils, his ears protrude outward giving the appearance of “ping pong paddles”, his feet appear to be about a size 13 ½, his arms hang below his knees, he is only about two feet tall, he looks like a “white monkey” with “no fur”, if he had a “bolt in his neck” he would resemble something that Dr Frankenstein would invent. Children like this one can be very dangerous to an Aged Gentleman such as myself, especially if the little bastard comes in bodily contact with me.
I now push my cart in a wide circle and come in about fifty feet behind these animals, both parents and the “thing” they have with them, I assume it is their son, (when “it” was born the Doctor slapped the mother), they are both now handling my Bacon, I watch as they throw my Bacon in their cart and then they turn and go down the canned fish aisle, the two adults seem to be fighting, good, I will go in the opposite direction, now I have to be on the lookout for two enemies, the old bitch and the “monster family”.
For a few moments I feel safe, I buy some bacon, then assuming that the “family from hell” are all through in the canned fish aisle I head into it to buy some “Spam”, I am half way down the aisle when I hear this ungodly “growling scream” up at the other end of the aisle where I am headed, that “kid thing” with the 13 ½ size feet comes screaming and racing around the corner, he is dragging a “lawn chair” with him that he took from the “summer fun display”, he is drooling and he has wet his pants, his crazy mother comes galloping about ten feet behind him.
I am unsteady on my feet, I say a prayer to Jesus The Christ, then I grab my cart, my knuckles are white, these bastards are headed right at me, the kid gets by me, then he trips, the lawn chair goes flying up against the meat counter, the mother grabs the kids neck, she must be squeezing his neck real hard because the kids veins look like “blue garden hoses”, they are sticking out all over his neck, he is squawking and gagging his eyes are bulging out, then she starts shaking him, he looks like he is going to pass out, his tongue is now hanging out and flapping from side to side. There was a meat man stocking the shelves, he dropped his meat tray and ran back into the meat room, he probably thought this women was going to attack him after she killed the kid.
The mother finally lets up, the kid is gasping, she screams, “you little son of a bitch, go pick that chair up and put it back or I’ll smash your face in with it”, the guys in the meat room are all peeking out the door at this display of “Motherly Discipline”. (Every supermarket has them, watch for them; sooner or later you will meet them).
My wife has just appeared out of somewhere, she is right beside me, she has the ability to appear and disappear without a sound when she is food shopping, she is oblivious to the world around her when she is reading labels, she says, “what’s going on over here, what was all that noise”, now my “real bad” leg is trembling, I reply, “nothing”, there is no sense in telling her about it, she will blame me.
I reach up and put a can of Spam in the cart then turn to say something to my wife, “she isn’t there”.
I have two more encounters with the “Savage Family” but nothing serious, these types of people that bother me in the stores all have the same habit, they will “double back” on me, they will go down an aisle and disappear, then just when I think I am safe, they come back and head right for me, Jesus it’s terrible.
Well, the “Vanishing Women”, my wife, is with me now, and it is time to look for a checkout line, when I have enemies in the store I have to be very careful when I check out, so I now look all around for the old women, no sign of her, good, I can’t see them but I can hear the drooling monster kid screaming over in the dairy department so I feel fairly safe.
I select a line and jump in, my wife vanishes again, I start to relax, I am now reading a headline on one of the Tabloids, it says, “Jesus Discovered Living In Cleveland Ohio” under it there is another that reads, “Boy Sees Through His Ears”, I smile, then I say to myself, “I bet that’s the kid that just had his neck wrung in the meat department”
My groceries are now on the belt, suddenly I feel it, a very slight pressure on my back, I turn, oh God, she is here, the old hag, right behind me, her arms still folded on the cart and she is staring right at me and grinning, she looks at my Spam and says “oh I love Spam” her false teeth float up and down when she talks, I would like to say, “who gives a shit” but I just nod and look away. I am almost free now; she has pushed her cart into my back about ten times. I pay my bill and am out in the main aisle.
Now, where the hell is my wife, buying lottery tickets, I move ahead and get up against the wall where I will be safe, the old women has just emerged from the checkout, she is crawling towards the exit, then she stops, she is actually standing still “smiling at the coke machine”.
My wife appears out of nowhere; out we go I made it without getting knocked down, thank you God.
As we are driving out I spot her, the old women is standing in front of the store looking in the window and smiling at herself. I close my eyes for a second and thank God that I won’t be anywhere near her when she’s backing her car up.
We shop in No Conway NH, that night while watching the news a story came on about an accident that occurred in the parking lot of the Conway Supermarket that we shop in, it involved a family of three, a man a women and a young boy about 6 yrs of age, witnesses said it seemed as though the women in the car was “strangling and shaking” a strange looking young boy, witnesses then said “the boy broke free and jumped out of the moving car”, his father ran over his head.
When you shop, watch for them, they are in every supermarket in America, you will see them, or, maybe they will find you.
Author: Red Burtt