Written January 2, 2006

What happened to me today?

Well, it seems that OCR computer programs know that it’s the holiday season and that everyone is hitting the bottle.

Because, today, I was scanning some text about my children’s book about that weather phenomenon, El Nino, from an old brochure I had produced. Scanning it saved me having to rewrite or retype descriptions of my books for the website I’m building, and I’m always one to avoid typing where possible. Some people’s fingers dance over the keys. My typing fingers need a walking frame.

But it’s holiday season and when the Optical Character Recognition program scanned the text, instead of writing El Nino, it wrote El Wino.

I tell you, perceptive computer programs like this are enough to make a man turn from drink.

Not that, when it comes to drinking, I’m as bad as some. For the last two days I’ve been getting all these sob stories from people who have hangovers. Personally, I only have one hangover and it’s a physical one. And that hangover is not my tummy hanging over my belt.

Thankfully, my tummy doesn’t have an overhang. But I look at some guys who have a huge beer belly and I find myself wondering whether, when they get excited, does it prop up their belly. But you didn’t want that mental image, did you?

I have to admit that my seeing in the 2006 New Year consisted of me going to bed sober to watch a TV program about Nat King Cole. A naturally brilliant singer who smoked cigarettes, Nat King Cole died of lung cancer at the much-too-early age of 45. What a waste! If he hadn’t smoked, he would have (a) had an even more honey-toned voice and (b) lived long enough for us to enjoy his music in stereo.

Me, I have never smoked cigarettes. I did, however, pretend to smoke a pipe when I was in my twenties and I have to admit that it was a very useful experience. I now never get nauseous when stoking the incinerator.

But other things can make me nauseous. Like the experience I had today. I went to a supermarket.

Now city dwellers may consider an outing to the supermarket as nothing very thrilling but, to a city boy who’s moved to quiet old Masterton, this is the only way I can relive the feeling of being in rush hour traffic. It’s all so familiar. You have traffic moving in all directions, trolley vehicles passing inches away from each other at silly speeds, vehicle operators with no real knowledge of the secrets of safe driving, and constant times where the traffic grinds to a complete stop because the carriageway has been blocked (usually by people standing chatting).

When these blockages occur, you have one of three choices. You can politely ask the chatting obstacle to “Excuse me”. However, any city dweller who has driven in rush hour traffic knows the likely rude-gesture result of that. Or you can just stop and stand there, hoping that the obstacle will see that they are holding you up and will move away.

The last resort, of course, is to just push your trolley vehicle through the too-small gap, caressing the usually-overlarge bum of the obstacle in the process.

This latter move is a last resort for the simple reason that, in this politically correct world, if one does this, one is likely to be charged with indecent assault with a trolley. On the other hand, she may think that you have purposefully caressed her bottom with your hand and will immediately have her way with you in the aisle between the pregnancy test kits and the disposable nappies. Not that one minds a lady having her way with one. It’s just that this particular environment is most bonk-discouraging.

And then there’s the big game hunter aspect of supermarket shopping. Take the bread aisle, as an example. In this aisle it’s like being on an well-stocked African plain. You are faced with a huge variety of targets to take a pot shot at. Do you go for the little cheetah (hamburger buns: $1.69 a packet), a mid-sized antelope (single loaf of bread: on special at $1.59), a hippopotamus (three loaves for $3.00), or the elephant (four loaves for $4)? Or do you just shoot yourself in the foot and get that fibre rich stuff worth nearly $4? Oh the thrill of supermarket shopping.

Having made your way through the highway and byways of the supermarket, the next task is to get through the supermarket tollgates, commonly known as the checkouts.

Today I got to the tollgates … er … checkouts just as a very delicious lady in her forties arrived at the same spot. So I smiled ever so nicely and waved her in front of me.

She smiled back and said. “No, no. It doesn’t matter.”

But I insisted. “Please,” I said.

She shook her head still smiling. “No, it’s quite alright.”

That’s when I dipped into my heavy armoury. I gave her a big smile and said jokingly: “Enough of this feminism! Please let me be a gentleman.””

Now, given that this lady didn’t look like a dyed-in-the-testosterone feminist, this was a fail-safe ploy. How could a woman refuse to let a man be a gentleman when women are always complaining that gentlemen are scarcer than males in an embroidery class?

Sure enough, with gracious acceptance she moved in front of me to the checkout.

Now before you start thinking that I’m a dashed nice chap, consider this: With her in front of me, I could feast my eyes on her femininity all the time she was at the checkout. If she’d been behind me, any surreptitious glances I made backwards would have been rather obvious and much less satisfying.

In other words, gentlemen are scarcer than the dodo bird, and for much the same reason – they’ve all been eaten for lunch.

So that delicious specimen of womanhood stood there, rather self-consciously exchanging the odd, (often very odd) smiles with me as the checkout girl worked away. I watched as the checkout girl waved a packet of baby’s trainer pants at the barcode reader.

“Interesting, I thought to myself. “For her own child or for her grandchild?” There are so many intriguing questions raised at supermarket checkouts.

The girl totalled up the transaction and the lady paid the money.

Then, sadly for me, she gathered up her shopping and walked towards the exit. I suppressed the desire to rush after her and, instead, moved up to pay for my small collection of items.

It was then that the checkout girl noticed that the lady had left a bag of her groceries behind. As quick as a flash the checkout girl grabbed it and went rushing out of the store after the lady.

It is only now that I realise that the lady must have meant to leave that bag behind, hoping that I would see it, grab it, and rush it out to her, giving her a chance to gratefully give me her phone number and other vital statistics.

But I was too slow. An opportunity missed! And I can’t even blame it on a hangover!

~sigh~