And That Was Awkward

This was written in October 2013, but at the time I had no blog up and running to post it on.  So here it is, a couple of months out of season:

At Trader Joe's this evening, I ran in to pick up some yogurt. But since it is Trader Joe's, I didn't quite make it to the dairy aisle right away and ended up picking up a cinnamon-scented decorative broom. Useless, but it smells nice. I laid it across the shopping basket hooked over my arm and went on.

As I perused the chocolate aisle (I was, after all, shopping for yogurt), a 60-somethings man in a plaid shirt and a pronounced beard walked up and said, “What? Is that your – NO...are you carrying your car?”

I looked at him through my starved-nursing-mother brain fog and, I feel sure, gave him my most utterly, completely, I-was-looking-at-chocolate-WHAT-and-I-also-have-not-eaten-and-I-am-a-starving-nursing-mom-WHAT look of Pure Blankness. Truth. I had white noise going in my brain. I looked soberly at my basket and the broom perched across it and nothing was registering that could offer any explanation for what he had just said. So, naturally, I just looked back and forth from him to my basket a couple of times, while saying nothing whatsoever.

I think I embarrassed him. He proceeded to mumble unintelligibly for long enough that I was just about to decide he was cooky and hadn't even been talking to me (and I was getting ready to swiftly escape to another aisle), but then he began to walk away and gesticulated in frustration towards my broom. “You know,” he said, “The broom, Halloween...it was a broom joke...it was a bad joke...” and he shook his head sadly as he walked away.

I laughed nervously and looked at my broom, back at him, and then turned and walked quickly away as he walked off muttering. I felt badly that I spoiled his broom joke, but...well...it WAS pretty bad. At least for a literal mind like mine, I guess the stretch from “car” to “broom” was a little too much of a hurdle, especially considering that it had been 1.5 hours since my last dose of calories. (In nursing-a-baby-boy-world this feels the same way that one would normally feel after going for 24 hours without nourishment. For reals.)

It also didn't hit me until much later that he had basically just called me a witch.  Ouch.

But I blame him entirely for what followed. As I checked out, I was chatting in a friendly way with the cashier (not something I usually find easy to do, except at Trader Joe's) as he bagged everything up. He picked the broom up last. “Would you like me to try to put this in a bag, ma'am?” he asked.

I was apparently feeling very warmed up after our friendly discussion of how to fit all of the yogurt I'd purchased into my not-quite-big-enough insulated bag. And I never do have quick-witted responses to anything anyone says – the response always hits me hours later, much too late to use it. This time, I was feeling very jolly indeed. This time, thanks to the failed suggestion of the odd man with the beard, I had a comeback.

So of course I, who never blurt out with anything primarily because I just don't think quickly enough (not because I possess remarkable amounts of self-control: see Proverbs 17:28), blurted out with my comeback. “I'll just carry it,” I said. “I'm going to fly on it.”

The moment the words left my mouth, I thought...”WHY???” Because, first and foremost, I had just called myself a witch. That was kind of a big one. For another thing, we don't even celebrate Halloween or witches or any of that stuff. Which you wouldn't necessarily have guessed given that I was joking about it. I vaguely thought, “Annnnnnnd that is why I normally do not try to joke on the spur of the moment.”

While all of these thoughts flashed through my head in one second, the cashier was lending credence to my thoughts as he laughed most nervously. Mostly likely because he was realizing that, women being the delicate creatures that they are, there was nothing he could possibly say that would go well. After all, I had basically just called myself a witch. If he agreed with me, I'd probably lambast him with my extremely heavy bag of yogurt, and he had already seemed slightly taken aback by the fact that I had been able to carry all of that stuff in one little basket. I think he called my basket a “kettlebell.” (Ha. Hahahaha. Ha. I can't even open a jar of pickles by myself. So that was hilarious.) If he didn't at least act like it had been funny, though, he could offend me that way, too. Either way, he was getting creamed by yogurt. (Ha. Hahahaha. Ha.) :P

Anyway.

So the poor young man just laughed awkwardly and said, “Ahaaah, um, well, I don't think you're a witch, ma'am.”

By this time I had rethought my entire joke, given that I would not have wished in any way to compare myself with...well...a witch. Poor taste, on so many levels. And so I responded with a very nervous laugh and an inexplicably enthusiastic, “Um...NO!!” And I grabbed my bags, wished him a good night, and dashed out of the door before I could say anything else.

Sometimes I am reminded that it is probably a good thing that I'm on the quiet side around people I don't know well...because I would say really weird things allllll the time otherwise. ;)