I just got back from a run to the grocery store.  Yes, it was 5:00 AM when I left.  Evie wasn’t sleeping and so I ran to the store to get something.  Upon trying to check out I went to the ‘express’ self checkout. I pushed the start button on the screen.
“Please remove the last item from the bag and scan it,” began the monologue.  Its a monologue because the computer talks to you in a somewhat friendly voice.  Forget that!  I haven’t even put anything in the bagging area.  I pushed start.  So I moved to a different self checkout venter next to the first one.  I hesitantly pushed the start button.
“Please remove youor hair in frustration as I also fail you in begining the self checkout process,” chimed the second computer.  This was going to be irritating.  So I moved to a third station where I began praying – I remembered that if I was Catholic it would have been at this time that I would have called on Saint Earnest who is the patron saint of grocery stores – I remembered that if I was Muslim I would declare jihad on this checkout station if it failed me –  I also remembered that if I was superstitious I might have checked more carefully for black cats upon approaching the self checkout area of the store.  Gingerly I pressed the start button.

“Please shoplift because this register is also a ticking time bomb of insanity,” cried the tiny, tinny speaker!  Just then an employee walked up to the command center for the express checkout area and hit a few buttons.  The computer reset the psychological profile settings and began working for me.  As I checked out my two items I noticed stickers in front of the bags: “Strive for Five!” they declared.  In small print they asked me to put five items per bag.  Five items per… interruption: the employee is now walking to the other self-inflicted-mockery machines and having to manually cancel out of the transactions I just started.  Offset by about 1.75 seconds they begin a litany describing what was wrong with cancelling out of the orders that they had failed to execute moments before.  1.75 seconds isn’t a long time except for when the sound of voices is correcting you and jumbling together in a cacophony of computerized trauma.

Back to the five: In my life I strive for various things.  Striving is a word I would use to describe intense athletic challenge type effort.  Striving is a word I would use to describe an energetic exertion pushing to achieve a deadline for work.  Striving doesn’t enter my mind at the grocery store.  Perhaps customers would put more than 2 items per bag in the self checkout station bags if the bags that the grocery store provided were not booby-trapped so that as soon as I walked out of the store with them they would rip down the side spilling the contents I had self-bagged at the self-checkout stand after self-selecting them as I walked by myself through the store.  Or, I could double-bag my groceries and feel somewhat better about striving for five.  Maybe next time I’ll quadruple-bag, put five items in the bags (96 oz. of Lactaid milk, 96 oz. of Orange Juice, two boxes of crackers on the ends so their sharp corners can stress the plastic film, and of course some eggs on top) and then begin the Russian roulette based walk to my vehicle.  That would be striving.