So I went to Wal-Mart to get a re-recordable DVD or two, and some regular ones.

As I made my way to the front, a rather elderly Wal-Martian, with Spandex pants pulled up high over her pot belly, stood staring at me, awaiting my need for her check-out prowess. I paused, saying, “I’m ready if you are.”

She frowned. I noticed her eyebrows seemed unnaturally bushy.

“Are you open?” I indicated her empty line, which she was posted at, like all good Wal-Martians, who wish to snag you and encourage you to pay for your selected items before leaving the store.

She nodded, but didn’t move.

So I just walked over to the checkout and waited for her to catch up.

She then took her post.

I said, indicating the two different packages, “I want to pay for this on one card, and this on another card.”

She seemed confused. I wasn’t sure if she was still thinking about her confusion of seconds ago, when I made the assumption that she knew what she was there for, or if this was new confusion. But she said, “You want each of these, both on the same card?”

“Nooo.” I was wondering how she made it through training. Maybe she hadn’t had any. Obligingly, I repeated my request, that I wanted to pay for each item with a different card.

“Why do you want to do that?” she asked, holding my dvd’s.

My knee-jerk retort was Nunya damn business why. Just do it. But I’m nice. Usually. “No ma’am, I want to pay for this item on this card–” I held it up. “And this other item on this other card–” another visual. “I want to pay with two different accounts, that’s all…”

She seemed baffled, but rang the first one up. I waited for her to press credit, and she didn’t. “Okay…” I said.

She lifted her caterpillar eyebrows.

“Okay. You can press credit, now.”

She whirled, with one finger already aloft in preparation.

Same thing happened with the next item.

Then, she paused to ask, “Do you want them in the same sack?”

No, I want THIS one in this sack, and this other one in a sack from way over there! Again. Nice. Play nice. I bit back my retort. If this continued, my tongue would be bleeding. “You can put both of them in the same sack, I don’t think it will foul up the credit card statement.”

She frowned again. The caterpillars mashing together atop her soupy brown eyes. She had a mole on her chin, I noticed. And there was a huge whisker planted in it. I looked down for my sack, but she hadn’t rotated the little caddy yet. It was still on her side of the counter. I waited, my own eyebrows high, hoping she’d remember.

“Have a day…” she said.

Have a day? Did she have a glitch in her software? I am having a day, that’s for sure. “Um, could you…” I rotated my finger to illustrate to her again with a visual, because words were obviously not her friend. She actually TURNED AROUND. I guess she thought I didn’t want her to watch me as I took my bag. We don’t want any witnesses, apparently.

I grabbed the metal sack arm, and whirled it myself, snatched the bag and was on my way out as she was turning around, still confused, her caterpillars waltzing on her brow.

I hoped this was her first and last day.