My husband, Jim, and I were shopping in the local Walmart before the latest and greatest ice storm mania. We had selected bread, milk, fruit etc. and were heading for the check out lane. Unbeknownst to us, the store had installed six new self check outs. We strolled over to the one with the light on and began "the test". The bread and milk were fine then our first snafu came when we had to scan the bananas. No sweat, we had to switch windows, press the button under the bananas (sounds like a psychology test from the seventies) and then we continued on. Next came the apples-they each had an unreadable label. Help was called and a very brusque young woman, with all the humor of the dead, walked across the aisle and flashed her badge with the correct code on it to reset the computer. She then turned and barked at my hapless husband to just read the numbers on the apple and enter them on the keypad. He tried to read the illegible label TWICE and the unhelpful help was called again.
My lost as a goose husband, had his glasses on and still couldn't read the fucking numbers. I picked up an apple and turned it just right so the light would hit the label and entered the 4 numbers on the keypad (I also had my glasses on). We finished our simple shopping trip and we both felt utterly demoralized. My husband just half smiled and joked that self checks must be the new "old fart test". He hunched his shoulders a little farther down, turned his collar to the wind and trekked back to the car. We threw the groceries into the back seat and I took another look at Jim's face. I laughed so hard I peed in my pants-good thing I was wearing a Poise pad...
