The Eye-man Cometh, part 2
cell phones, Costco and shopping carts
by Dave McAwesomeQuick recap: I have decided to entrust my vision to the CostCo price warehouse, home of the Volvo-sized bags of tortilla chips. Killing time before my appointment, I am taking my shopping cart (which I've dubbed Fido) into the media aisles to check out how many copies of Will Smith's I, Robot the store will be stuck with after the holidays (answer: lots). Meanwhile, my cell phone is still deceased.
I hit the CD aisle. Fido waits for me at the end. It has become fashionable (in the world of bulk shopping at least) to package 10 CDs worth of classical music into a bundle for a shockingly low price. Being a poor person, I must admit I've partaken in this fad. The recordings are usually quite good, and if you're a non-expert like me then I'm certain we don't know if we're missing anything. So, you see, it's a perfect application of the 'ignorance is bliss' hypothesis. One CD bundle caught my eye. "Classical Music with Ocean Sounds." I'll write that again because it bears repeating. "Classical Music with Ocean Sounds." Damnation. I KNEW there was something missing. Every freakin' time I listened to Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" I thought, "hot dog, if only this had ocean sounds, some serious ass would be kicked right about here." I'm sure the trustees of the Bach estate have tucked away some secret personal diary pages in which J.S. launches into a screed about his inability to harness ocean sounds on a church organ. Thankfully, these horrible miscarriages of musical justice have been avenged. "Classical Music with Ocean Sounds." Check it out, philistine.
On to the juice aisle, I say, making my way out of the CD area. Sweet buggery, where's Fido? Pah, I spit, these aisles all look the same. I comb a few more places, darting my head up, down and sideways in the hopes the alarming nature of such actions will send Fido rolling back to me in a panting, puppy dog fashion. Death and drek, I spot one of the food items from my cart carefully misplaced on a stack of I, Robot DVDs. Fido's gone! What manner of foul trespass is this? I tense, ready to tackle the next cart-pusher I see who has my remaining food items. It's bad enough the bastard REMOVED my stuff from the cart. He kept the rest! Unbeknownst to me, I was shopping for HIM! Arg, devious cart thief, if I ever catch a whiff of you bragging about your heist to your buddies over an Amstel Light, I will destroy you and your ability to reproduce. Gah, back to the entrance to fetch a new cart, before I pop a vein. Oh, fer crissakes, what's this? You see, CostCo employs a door jockey to check that everyone who enters has an official CostCo membership card. This is the entrance. The exit is a separate affair where other door jockeys check your receipt to match it up with the contents in your cart. So this guy doesn't want me to go out through the 'in' door . . . even though there is a train of carts not five feet from the entrance. I brush by and grab a cart anyway. I've been robbed. Worse, the cart was property of CostCo, so in truth, CostCo was robbed! In broad daylight, no less. Door jockey was not happy that I violated the sacred one-way entrance, but, had he enforced the "no one enters without a cart" rule, I would not be in this predicament. I suppose I should have said that out loud. It was certainly what I was thinking, and I tried to convey these feelings in a telepathic glower, but to no avail. I decide not to name my new cart. That way there will be less separation anxiety later.
This time, I fill up my cart with heavier items. Even if I won't buy them later. Six DVD players? Sure. Thirty-two deluxe edition I, Robots in which the producers apologize for raping a brilliant work of literature? Why not. (They raped it, sodomized it and then raped it again. The bastards.) I park my cart outside the eye place again, and descend into what I hope won't be Mengele's basement.
Now it is official. I am putting my eyesight in the hands of the same people who sell Snickers bars in boxes longer than my arm and who dole out samples of seasoned potato puffs at the ends of the aisles (at least I HOPE those were potato puffs). Blindness won't be all bad, I think. At least I'll get preferential seating on the subway. Move it sister, I'll say, blindman comin' through. Plus, I'd never have to watch Survivor again.
The exam was quickly finished. Heh, that didn't take too long. Wait a sec, should eye exams take a long time or not? I can't remember and decide to hook back onto the 'ignorance is bliss' theory again. The eye people certainly HAD all the right looking equipment, even if they didn't necessarily know how to use it. They at least put on a good show of it, so I appreciated the effort.
The rest of my shopping experience went to plan. My cart was still waiting for me after the appointment. I bought a new pair of eyeglasses from an overly enthusiastic salesman. (By the way, does it bother anyone else that every eye doctor also sells eyeglasses? What if spinal surgeons sold wheelchairs and podiatrists sold walking canes? You wouldn't trust your health to those barbarians, would you?) I picked up my frozen chicken breasts, stared down a rival shopper who wished she had chosen my check-out line instead, and went home to contemplate life without a cell phone.
The lesson to be learned here, clearly, is that CostCo's medical division ought to be expanded to subsume all the industries of quasi-doctoring such as podiatry, dentistry, plastic surgery and, well, at least podiatry. I'm sure that, like me, you can barely wait for the near future time in which your bulk shopping needs will be enhanced by face lifts and breast augmentation at a low, low price.
Back to Part 1.
