Hurricane Irene

If there is one thing you could point to about Marylanders, and this gets my goat, is the constant overreaction to life’s calamities.  We’re getting a half inch of snow?  Let’s drive down to the local supermarket, spend hundreds of dollars, in order to weather the possible day of inconvenience.

                Now Hurricane Irene was nothing to sneeze at, especially if you lived on the Eastern Shore of the state, that said, this weather brings out the crazies.  Try finding a battery bigger than a double AA.  Impossible!  Candles?  The only candles remaining had dubious scents, such as Lavender Cheesecake, Bronx Monkey House and Grandma’s Pot Roast.   The latter two smelled eerily similar.

                People descend like a swarm of locusts, picking up everything in its path.  The store shelves rapidly empty of everything. 

“Honey, isn’t that liver in the meat case.” 

“Yes, dear it is.”

Before I can run to it, an albino dwarf comes running over scoops it up, fiendishly laughs and with a huge hunchbacked Samoan running interference for him, scampers over to the cashier line, where he waits 45 minutes to pay for his prize.

Major weather and the Christmas holidays bring out the lunatics who don’t normally shop.  I was waiting to return some spoiled cheese.  The customer service person asks who is next in line.  A middle aged, spinsterish woman, with straight bangs and that off-kilter look in her eye says it is her.

I turn around and say, no it’s not, in fact, I was waiting here while you were still in the checkout line.  She’s still insistent.  The man that was in front me in line supports my claim.  I complete my transaction and she’s still at it.  I turn gaze into her off center eyes and say, again, that she’s wrong.  She’s says I’m weird.  That may be, I tell her, but I was still in line before you.  I quickly hurry away as she starts to short circuit like one of the Stepford Wives.