Box Fight in Pricemart

So what’s life been like since Gerry retired?  Well, I’ll give you the latest little episode.  I usually enter the Membership Warehouse Store, Pricemart, with a list and a mission:  to get in and out of there as fast as possible.  When Gerry retired, I eventually talked him into going with me to help haul out the big, wholesale-sized packages, even though he really dislikes shopping in general and these ‘Big-Box’ places in particular (“I abhor these appalling bloody abysses, with their retarded zombie staff”).  He tries to avoid it like the plague – but, over the years, Gerry has learned that it’s sometimes best to take the path of least resistance…  Still, from day one, he made it clear that he only entered that store under great duress.  And that I owed him.  This trip last Friday was no exception but his mood was even more foul than usual - and I was irritable too.  So we walked in there with the list, quickly piled up the supplies in the shopping cart and went to the check-out counter.  While Gerry was unloading the items onto the conveyor belt and the clerk was scanning the items, I quickly moved to the end of the counter and packed them neatly back into another cart.  Every action was designed to expedite the process, in order to get out of the store as quickly as possible and with the minimum of fuss.

So, I had just finished stacking the items and was ready to sign the credit card receipt, when Gerry storms through the crowd, takes one look at our neatly stacked shopping cart, and does not like what he sees!  Suddenly, he demands of a ‘packer’ more boxes to pack up the merchandise the way he wants to do it!  He needs lots of boxes – and he wants them “ya” (right now, for non-Spanish speakers)!  So now boxes are flying, clerks are running to get more boxes - and I am burning with fury; I just want to…

…grab a box and whack Gerry up-side the head with it!  So he grabs a box and throws it at me – and now boxes are really flying.  And now everybody is throwing boxes…  Boxes are flying everywhere…  It’s a Box Fight at Pricemart!  And now everybody is laughing – because it is all so ridiculous – and everybody now gets a couple of boxes to take home. 

Wait a minute!  Did that really happen?  Well, some of it did.  As Gerry demanded boxes and more boxes, I ended up just paying for the bill, my face blazing hot with rage and embarrassment.  But I remained silent, keeping in mind that the mission was to just get out of there; Gerry gave the harassed ‘packer’ a good tip and we left the store – and we didn’t really start to laugh about it until later.  Did that really happen?  Did we just behave that way?  The main thing to remember in situations like that is to keep laughing and loving, no matter how much you want to pick up that box and…