Making Up for the General Lack of Sarcasm and Hyperbole On This Blog

So, it's that time of year again. Peace on earth, goodwill towards men, blah blah blah blah blah.

Don't get me wrong, I love Christmas and the winter holidays. But inside of all of us there is an irate Grinch just dying to come out and ruin it for everybody.
Therefore, I am taking it upon myself to make a series of whiny, griping, unnecessary posts, mostly to bring my sarcasm level up to a healthy number.
And I will start with the Woman at Aldi.

I've never understood why people choose to believe that Christmas is a time of year when people do or should treat each other with more goodwill and respect. If anything, Christmas seems to turn me into more of a greedy, avarice-filled consumer, ready to fight in grocery stores and crush any human who gets in between me and my desired purchase.

Running a few errands for my mom with my girlfriend was no exception. Shopping is serious stuff. The object is to get in and out of the store as quickly as possible, while spending the least amount of money and getting the most amount of food. Speed is a priority.

I had carefully stacked our shopping destinations, first going to the supermarket, where we needed the of groceries, and finally ending up at Aldi.
The aisles at Aldi are very low. Across the top of one I eyed a predatory, hawk-like shopper who seemed to be breezing through her shopping, unhappy children in tow, with the intensity of a headhunter close on the heels of a prize suspect. She regarded my friendly we're-both-shopping-and-we-just-made-eye-contact smile with disgust and dark suspicion.
Noting her unpleasant demeanor and pasting a winning smile on my face so that I could at least feel like a nicer person (I think not having a child to jerk around by the arm probably put me in the lead for the Nice Award anyway), I recommenced my shopping.

But the Headhunter Demon Shopper wasn't through with me yet.

I finished shopping about five minutes before her, but of course having more than one check-out line open would have been just extravagant, so I had to hang out sideways in line, since it was too long for my cart to sit in straight. But I was clearly in line, and had been so for five freaking minutes when who should finish her grocery hunting but Demon Shopper.
I saw her regarding the long, single line through narrowed eyes. Just then, the first shopper was checked out and the line moved up dramatically.
The next moment went down in slow motion. The racket of Johnny Mathis music died away, and there was only silence, the Demon Shopper, and I.
She looked at the line. She looked at me. She stood at the bottom of one aisle, which fed directly into the end of the line. My cart was still hanging out in an awkward diagonal position.
Suddenly, she flew into action. In order to straighten my cart out, I had to withdraw and do some fancy steering work. As I commenced this, the woman ran down the aisle, denim skirt flapping around her legs and rucking up over her tennis shoes, enough for male customers to possibly even see her ankles in her rabid rush towards the check-out line.
I gasped, throwing myself against the cart in that epic moment, shoving my girlfriend out of the way and running over her foot in my haste to reposition my buggy in a more obviously territorial fashion. (Actually, I may not have run over her foot...maybe I almost ran over her foot. Anyways, I would have, if it had been in my way).
And then she came, twitching with victory, and shoved my cart out of the way, nosing her much fuller cart in front of mine.
My friend bit her lip in agony. The woman who had proceeded me in line, but was now in front of the check-out line equivalent to Alexander the Great, looked at me and my usurper with surprise and vague discomfort, blinking several times. The wench that took my spot looked out towards the exit and refused to make eye contact.
I stood, seething for a moment. The appropriate thing to do would have been to say,
"Excuse me, you took my spot."
However, so great was my rage, augmented by the irritating voice of Mathis bellowing something historically undocumented about St. Nicholas, that I knew if I opened my mouth only one word could possibly come out. And this word is insulting and is sometimes used to refer to female dogs. And it would inevitably be loud and infinitely audible to the other shoppers.

So the moral is:

1) There are nastier people than me in the store.

2) What I should have done from the beginning was ask the docile older lady originally in front of me to move her fanny up a little, and then made everyone in line very uncomfortable by wedging myself behind them in the clearly limited space, ultimately forcing everyone to slowly cram together into more intense physical closeness to make room for ME.

And,

3) Dressing like a less-stylish Michelle Duggar does not make you a better person. If you're a petty self-absorbed woman with a tendency to emotionally abuse children, you will still be a petty self-absorbed woman with a tendency to emotionally abuse children after you put on the turtle-neck and denim skirt. In fact, even forcing your children to follow you in your sartorial downfall and willfully neglecting your hair for an extended period of time will not make you a nicer person. But it does make it easier for irrationally bitter bloggers to make fun of you.

Anywho, I stood there frothing at the mouth and trying to remember all the things my beautiful parents taught me about acting like Jesus until suddenly another line opened.

Final result? I got to stand in line behind a chatty, potentially creepy old man buying beer and hear about the evil of folks on food stamps. Merry Christmas.