Dubble Bubble, Toil and Trouble

I'm a person who likes theories. And I'm a person who likes to come up with them. Some of my theories are more far fetched like the one I have about JFK, however, most of them are harmless observations about human behavior. For instance, I have a theory that we are all allotted only so many words in the day and that the moment you exceed your individual quota your mouth will forbid them to come out in the right order, no matter how hard you try.

Another theory I have about quotas and allotments concerns the amount of patience in the world. I believe there is only so much to go around in the course of the day and once it's gone, it's gone. Today I think someone used it all up pretty early on.

Standing in lines has never been my cup of tea and today, given the lack of patience available to me in the universe, it nearly sent me over the edge.

The first line was at a large evil chain store where I had gone in search of something to cool off my insufferably hot apartment. I have this theory about lines; the one with the least number of people in it will get you out of the door the fastest. Although my theories have proved untrue a time or two.

So, there was a sweet elderly lady and her husband who had been rung up already and only needed to pay for their items so I thought it was the perfect qeue. Oh, how I was wrong. The dance between checkbook and patron and cashier and reciept took a full ten minutes. I was forced to throw a Diet Mountain Dew in my pile due to the exertion of standing in one place for so long.

The second line was later in the day at the grocery store. The woman checking out in front of me only had a few items and so did I so I thought, "Man, I lucked out." Well let me tell you, man, I did NOT luck out. The cashier held up a bag filled with Dubble Bubble and asked the woman, "How many do you have?"

"What do you mean?" asked the woman. "Don't you weigh that stuff by the pound?"

"Um, no we don't," replied the clerk. "It's 5 cents a piece. So how many?"

"I guess I'll have to count."

So we all waited while the woman slowly counted each and every individually wrapped gumball and set them on the checkout counter. "1...2...3...4.......61...62...63." Sixty-three gumballs scattered all over the place.

"That will be $3.15," said the cashier and then she moved on to the rest of the woman's items.

What couldn't have been more than 20 seconds later a plump young boy of 10 years, chocolate smeared all over his face, ran up to the woman who was his mom. He was holding a bag of individually wrapped chocolates.

Somehow I made it out of the store with all of my grocery items in my brown paper bag and my mouth tightly shut. I guess some of that patience got passed my way after all.