This afternoon I spent half an hour in a crowded supermarket taking a cell phone call from my mom’s doctor.
Did you know that the quietest place in a busy supermarket is the condom aisle?
I have trouble hearing properly on cell phones, and as a result tend to shout into them. So I crouched on a little step-stool there by the Trojans and listened to an internist tell me all about aortic aneurisms.
There are two types. Well, who knows? Maybe there are a dozen. I learned about two today: thoracic and abdominal. Happily, I learned about the kind that are fairly regular in shape and only four centimeters in diameter.
In retrospect, I wonder what the heck that step-stool was doing in the condom aisle.
I mean, the highest shelf is a little below eye-level. I think most people browsing the
This is an aisle at Thompson Dean Drug in Sioux Falls, Iowa. I offer it here for scale.
prophylactics would be tall enough to reach them – sort of a You-must-be-this-tall-to-ride-this-ride phenomenon.
Of course there are little people and folks in wheelchairs to be thought of, but the step-stool can’t be much help to those with limited mobility, so really that just leaves the under-4-foot crowd, of which there are few. Are people sending their children to buy condoms for them? I can see it now… “Do you like being an only child, Jane? Good. Here’s Mommy’s wallet – off you go.”
Regardless of age or height, any shy people hoping to buy vaginal lubricant or pregnancy tests today between 4:00 and 4:30 were out of luck, because there I was, parked in front of those and other supplies, yelling “WHAT?” and “You mean we need to see a thoracic surgeon and a vascular surgeon and – wait, which do we have to do first?”
During a long silence on my end, a friend spotted me and put her hand comfortingly on my arm, then looked startled and said, “Sorry!” Sorry because I was on the phone? Or sorry because she found me in the condom aisle? We may never know.
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