Hi, Diary. The muse would have me sing of checkout lines today for some reason. So I've chosen the Safeway on Wilson Boulevard in R-- as my "source authority" for today's anecdotes. I picture kind of an Andy Rooney harangue focusing on several concrete experiences culled from my actual food-store adventures, say one incident per paragraph. Of course, the topic doesn't sound overly promising, but I'd better work with what the muse gives me, on the off chance that she knows what she's talking about. Besides, not every poet is called upon to chronicle the labors of Hercules or to sing the Song of Roland or to praise the stratagems of Beowulf in driving Grendel from Heorot, the meadhall of Hrothgar, king of the Danes. If the truth be known, some of us are lucky to get assignments poking fun at Bob Squarepants! So bear with me as I strive for greatness within the stingy parameters of supposedly divine guidance.

Incident one: The hasty watermelon.

I'm minding my business, right? laying a wrapped slice of watermelon on the check-out conveyor belt rather than holding the dangerously juicy morsel in my hands and risking a melon stain on my workday threads. Suddenly, to my unbounded horror (or at least to my extremely slight concern) the cashier puts the pedal to the metal on the belt and my poor watermelon slice goes barrelling forward out of my reach. Well, there's a young lady ahead of me (20-something, 6-foot-something, ugly-something) about to pay for a bottle of some-such soda, you understand, and when she sees that watermelon of mine fly by her and right up to the cashier -- ahead of her and her soda -- why, she turns around and gives me a proper look, which, translated into English, said: "Ahem! I beg your pardon!" And I'm like (or rather I look at her like): "What? Am I supposed to keep my watermelon on a leash? Save that look for the cashier who revved up the conveyor belt at such an inopportune moment! I mean, Dear Lady: You're blamin' the victim here!"

Incident two: Well, actually this is incident One-A, wherein less than a week after the foregoing incident, I get a nasty look from a cashier for refusing to put an item of fruit on her conveyor belt -- precisely because I wanted to avoid getting another sour look from the customer in front of me. When I explained my actions (or rather my inaction), the employee gave me a lecture about how it's the customer's responsibility to put one of those separator bars behind their prospective purchases, and if they don't, they have no call to wax indignant. Now they tell me! (Ever since then, I put two -- count 'em, two! -- separators on each side of my fruit, every time I check out! Let's see anyone complain now!)

Incident three: How much is that coleslaw in the window.

How about the time I made the mistake of questioning the cost of a quarter pound of coleslaw purchased in conjunction with two chicken thighs? (Well, I'm sorry, but I thought the slaw was on sale, okay?) Well, the cashier positively stalks away, as who should say, "Just my luck!" and when he returns, he rings the sucker up again with the correct price -- and I'm like: That's more like it. But as I'm indolently browsing over the receipt chez moi, munching happily on my precious chicken thigh, my eyes almost pop -- for what do you suppose? The corrected price of the cole slaw turned out to be double that of the original figure that the cashier rang up. Indeed, I now reflected, the original cole slaw was only .88 cents, so what was I thinking by demanding a "recount" in the first place?'