Oh, my hair!

So I'm about to check out at the grocery store with five items in my mini cart. Normally, I use the self-checkout system because it eliminates the possibility of many of the infuriating time wasters such as the person in line in front of me whipping out a checkbook, questioning the sticker price, buying stamps, forgetting eggs, etc.


It's quite simple: Removing human interfacing will get me to my car faster.


But since I had a bottle of scotch and a bottle of Drambuie in my cart, I figured I'd have to encounter a person at some point in order to verify my age and remove the safety caps from the bottles, so I just picked what looked like the lesser evil of two open check-out lines.


Each line had one customer. The guy in one of those lines had nothing on the conveyor belt so I assumed he was in the process of paying, so I chose his line.


Immediately as I began placing my items on the belt, I noticed the customer was discussing the price of the ten packages of chicken he was purchasing. In his defense, his line of questioning was valid and he ended up saving money. If that was all that held me up, I would have forgotten about it the minute I left the store.


Then I saw his cart. Mind you, his cart was in front of him and he was already past the belt, standing by the card swiper - this is a sure indicator that all items have been scanned, right?


Wrong as wrong can be.


This asshole had a full-size cart loaded with groceries. He never put them on the belt. Instead, after the chicken puzzle was solved, he reached into his cart and handed each item, one by one, to the cashier who had to accept the handoff, scan the item, and reach out for the next handoff.


By now, of course, the other line was empty. I could have packed up my five items, placed them back in my mini cart, and switched lines. But in Frayo's World, that would be a grave mistake, for sure as shit, the moment I would leave the current line, someone with a full cart would beat me to the other line. Then, if I would have decided to return to the original line clogged up by this guy, someone else would have taken my spot in line there.


So I waited, visibly irritated and shaking my head in disbelief in what I was witnessing. I mean, who the crap doesn't use the conveyor belt, particularly when you have 49 items in the cart!?


Meanwhile, someone else did come through the other line and completed her entire checkout transaction while I stood there hopelessly watching and waiting.


I swear to all that I know that this shit doesn't happen to anyone else but Frayo. Ever. It is the perfect example of what we call a Capital T. The T stands for *typical* and we refer to any adverse outcome of a given situation that could have gone another way just as easily as a Capital T.


Capital T has a sibling that we call "Can Opener." This was derived from an episode of South Park where Kenny's poor family finally is able to sit down at the table to have a meal which is a single can of corn or something, and just as soon as they're about to serve it, Kenny's dad says, "Does anybody have a can opener?"


Silence.


"God damnit."


If I get a text from Fred that says "Can opener," I know something unfortunate has happened. Some situations can be both a Capital T and a can opener. Only those in our world really know how to make that call.


Toodles.