I went to the liquor store the other day.

Some states apparently don’t have this establishment.  Unique to my fair state of Pennsylvania are the Wine and Spirits stores which sell, predictably, wine and spirits.  The hours are restrictive, and these products are only available through these state sanctioned outlets unlike, say, Maryland, where one may purchase any varietal of intoxicant in a booze super store.  Alternatively, other restrictions exist, variable by state, on the sale and purchase of alcohol. Should your curiosity hum, I suggestively point your research to such vastly available resources as the google, the yahoo, and the search engine.

I went to the liquor store after the grocery store.  My shopping engagement was pre-calculated to last fifteen minutes.

Does anyone else do this?  How often do we make attempts to quantify our hours and schedule out our days?  How often does this conceptual framework meld with what actually occurs?

It took an extra four minutes just to decide what energy drink I wanted.  Why did it take so long?  I was looking for a four pack on sale and then I didn’t see the one that I liked on sale so I stood there not trying to look weird staring at energy drinks for three and a half minutes and ended up selecting some ineffectual coffee milk blend that was on sale even though I had no intention of purchasing a coffee milk blend packaged in reasonably purchasable glass adornment but it was on sale.

So this blew a total of ten minutes of my prescribed fifteen allowed to this endeavor.

As I hit minute eleven, or twelve, thirteen, how many people are counting…..

I am then leisurely strolling upon the strip mall walkway towards the liquor store.

To clarify, it is one thirty in the afternoon.  I am en route to buy a bottle of whiskey, which I will enjoy piecemeal, after I leave work and return home many hours later.

Ten paces from the store, a shabby, taupe colored pickup rockets forward and halts twenty feet in front of me.  The truck is parked, facing the wrong direction, in a fire lane, against the curb, and a functional, ambulatory quinquagenarian, proceeds through the doors I am a mere seconds from opening.

As I select my bottom shelf sour mash, I can’t help notice that the errant scofflaw is pressing the clerk to get for him a bottle of Jaegermeister that he won’t walk another ten feet to grab for himself. She selects it for him, all the time deflecting his vapid “sweethearts” and additional swill that spews from his ridiculous blow hole.

There is an unfortunate moment, in actuality, its about five moments, where this unnecessarily helpful clerk attempts an upsell to the giftset sitting on the counter that has two shot glasses and which she claims that the Jager bottles are the same size but they are not and she tries to involve the manager but he’s busy doing some other fucking thing and I’m waiting behind this guy trying to get some jager and a botched sales pitch that inevitable will cost the establishment money all the while I’m thinking about this guy that just parking his fucking truck at the curb and is in such drastic need of this Jager at one thirty in the afternoon.

So I wait.

I do it patiently.

I cordially purchase my whiskey, and I stroll to my legally parked car.

I know that it can’t possibly be that bad.

It won’t that be that bad, ever.

At least, for me, I will never act that way.

Seriously, what is wrong with people?

J