A Matter of Convenience

I woke up today with a keen sense of nothing. I had the day all set out in front of me like a freshly stocked wedding buffet - before the bride's drunk uncle started picking through the bacon weiners. I had nothing to do and all day to do it. So, I threw myself out bed and started running. I decided to just hop in the car and let the day come to me. After grabbing a paper at the news stand and a slow death of a breakfast at a franchise restaurant, I decided to mosey on over to the regional convenience store.

Now, I'm not talking about 7-11 stores - I'm talking about those regional convenience stores that make out-of-towners question incredulously , "You mean you don't have a/an where you live?" Kind of makes you feel like you should apologize or plan a family vacation around it next year just so you can scratch it off the "Places I Need To Visit" list currently yellowing and curling under the "Hang in there, baby" cat magnet on your refrigerator. These are the same people who would ask if you've had a REAL beef tongue sandwich because "you haven't tasted real beef tongue until you've had some of OUR beef tongue - Texas style!" Personally, being french-kissed by my entree would appeal to me as much as slow dancing with my proctologist before being put under. That ain't sexy.

But, I digress.

I am an iced tea fiend. No, I don't have to register with local authorities when I move into your neighborhood - well, at least not yet, but my obsession with Arizona Iced Tea borders on the sexual. If I have less than 10 bottles in my fridge, I get the night sweats. I noticed that the good people at Arizona make many different types of iced tea: Ginseng, Sweet Tea, Green Tea, etc. I can understand that, but then they go too far. Orange tea? Peppermint tea? Coffee-flavored tea? Who drinks this superfluous nonsense? I only drink the lemon-flavored tea, yet, whenever I go to a convenience store, inevitably all of that fringe tea is clogging up the shelf space and my beloved lemon tea is out of stock. I am not a violent man, but at moments like that I would gladly teach the laws of supply and demand at gunpoint to the store manager.

So, I go into the local convenience store for my iced tea. I buy four bottles for $5.96. The cashier says, "That'll be $5.97, hon." I stall just long enough to give her one of those "Still working on that GED, aren't you?" looks. I give her a $10 bill and she gives me four singles and five pennies back. I felt like I stepped into some sort of parallel universe where Spock has a beard and I'm half expecting Candid Camera's Allen Funt to come bounding out of the display of tortilla chips saying, "We'd thought it'd be funny if..."

Ever have that one store you always go to as if you cannot avoid going in there? There's always that one person working the register that you hope you never get. It's either that leering borderline sex offender who tries to sniff the ladies and asks if they have a boyfriend, or it's the heavily-painted, turbo-smoking, good ol' gal who is so starved for romance that she just has to drop some sort of quasi-sexual comment every time she rings you up. Then, she'll erupt into a wheezing, semi-asthmatic trailer park backfire of a cough. She'll hand you your change with that "Call me sometime" desperate look in her eyes while you're high-stepping it out of there like a drum major on fire.

I would really hate skipping that store, though, because they have everything. There's a deli, iced coffee, and even a place to get hot dinners. Hell, I heard that next year they are putting in a mosh pit, birthing center and Cirque Du Soleil. In the future, you'll walk in the door and through some sort of laser membrane that will determine that you need cough drops, dry dog food and a jelly donut - and, magically, those items will be waiting for you at the cash register. Smoker? Marlboros waiting for you. Caffeine addict? Piping hot cup of joe. Man who still lives in his mom's basement? Wrestling magazine. Full service at full scale. Yet, I know I would have one question while visiting that convenience store of the future:

Why wouldn't I ever have condoms waiting for me at the register?