Battery, no assault

I hate the feeling of things in my pockets. I'm not sure when or why this started, but I have somehow over the years developed a severe aversion to having anything in there rattling around, jabbing me in the thighs, poking me in the hips, shifting around while I walk. So I carry the minimum in my wallet, don't stuff my pockets with cash and change, and absolutely abhor large keychains. As a result, the key ring I do carry is rather small, and when I got the largish fob that came with my Passat, I came to realize that there was just no way this thing was going to fit on the key ring...or even if it did, the monstrosity it created was NOT going into my pocket. So instead I carry my house keys on one side, and my car key on the other (pickpockets, take note). Since it's winter, I'm wearing my fleece, providing me with an extra layer not between my skin and the elements, but between me and my keys - they're in my fleece pockets. And rather than taking my keys out after I get home and running the risk of misplacing them, I just leave them in the fleece on the coat rack. Ok, enough exposition. The scene is now set.

This past weekend, Mrs. Dave caught a whiff of said fleece, and declared it was time to wash it. Apparently the garment was a few seconds short of jumping off the wall and throwing ITSELF into the washing machine, such did its own stench offend the nostrils. She took the house keys out of one pocket, and...well, you see where this is going. It wasn't until we heard what sounded like a billiard ball ricocheting about in the dryer that she realized the error of her ways. She rescued it from the machine, but the damage was done. The fob is dead, long live the fob.

Just for the hell of it, I took it back to my back office and performed a post-mortem on it. The circuitry was a little powdered over, which I swabbed off with a Q-tip. The two little WAFFER-thin batteries (sorry, I can't just say "wafer" normally after watching The Meaning of Life one too many times) were a bit rusted out, but otherwise, things looked pretty much ok. Because I'm the geek that I am, I took the other fob and opened that one up too. It looked much cleaner inside - ironic, since it wasn't the one that had been through a dual spin-cycle and half of a medium-heat tumble dry. After some mixing and matching of parts, and testing from the safety of our kitchen window - I didn't feel like traipsing down to the driveway to test, but our kitchen is within range - I determined that the batteries were the most likely culprit, and off to the local drugstore I went.

After finding the random batteries in the most remote section of the place, I walked up to the counter with my find. At this point, there were two registers open: one with two people in line, and one with one. As is human nature, I stood in the shorter line, and waited patiently while the person in front of me paid for her purchase. As the cashier was handing the customer her bag, she looked up, looked straight at the second person in the OTHER line, and said "Can I help the next person, please." (And no, that's not a question, that's a statement. I never understood the practice of turning questions into statements - why not just say "I can help the next person."? A personal favorite is waiters stating "Hi, how are you"; it's an integral part of the customer service Mad Lib. But I digress.) So upon hearing the cashier make her proclamation, Granny in line two moved over, cut in front of me, and began her transaction. Ok, I said to myself, she was here before me, she's sweet and grandmotherly, no big deal. As I had gotten in line, I had noticed another woman who looked like the mutant offspring of Dee Snider and Rapunzel - such was her four foot long blonde frosted ponytail - looking through the candy rack that stands across from the cashiers. Sometime during the last 30 seconds, she had slid into second place in line two, and just then it dawned on me that I was now stuck behind someone doing a return. A return. At CVS. Who values their time so lowly that it's worth their while to return a pair of drugstore tweezers?

Meanwhile, the person at the front of the other line finished up her purchase, and then in super-slow-mo, the cashier looked up, smiled at Mrs. Rapunzel Snider, and (to quote Daniel Stern as Kevin Arnold in "The Wonder Years"), it was at that moment I realized that the two cashiers did not share the same philosophy on where exactly the next person in line stood. Suddenly My Little Pony was at the head of jer line, without giving a thought in the world to the person who had obviously been standing there before her, who had watched bemusedly while she pawed the Peppermint Patties. Granny was STILL processing her deal with the cashier - apparently she needed to shift the 59 cents into her offshore Cayman Islands account - and I was stuck in drugstore limbo behind the oblivious and the inconsiderate.

Giving Twisted Sister the benefit of the doubt, I imagined she had some medical emergency or other urgent matter to attend to, so out of pure curiosity, I leaned over to see just what it was in her clutches that could necessitate an outright violation of the Convenience Store Line Act of 1873. I expected to see something like a bone saw and a roll of duct tape, or a "Do-It-Yourself Appendectomy Kit". But instead, I see DEODORANT AND BLOW POPS.

Standing this close, I'm not immediately aware of any bodily odor that would kill a houseplant at fifty yards; nothing that would portend an imminent hospital visit. And if she was somehow hypoglycemic, blow-pops (two bags!) would seem to be an odd choice given they'r emore of a slow-release mechanism for the sugar she so desperately needed... especially since we've already established that she had already personally fondled each individual bag of candy in the facing display.

I did, however, get the last laugh - while Cousin It was fumbling with change for her roll-on/sugar-high combo special, Granny had finished her complex financial transaction, and I was ready with the battery packages, UPC code side up, and a $5 bill. I was hauling ass out of there while she was still fishing for pennies in her change purse. JUSTICE IS MINE...and isn't it funny how a lack of extra crap in my pockets facilitated my quick getaway.

But not quite as funny as seeing a woman of at LEAST 85 years of age climb into a ragtop Mustang (not exactly the vehicle of choice for New England winters) outside the store and go rolling off with enough low-end muffler rumble to make me nearly lose control of my bowels.

Or as funny as taking the batteries home and testing them from the kitchen, only to scare the crap out of our neighbor by accidentally setting off the alarm. I just about blew her off her bike and into the snowdrift lining our driveway...