6/1/5 - St Helens to Longview

With a little time to kill before headin’ back to squabble with the front-office boys in Longview over my monthly receipts, I made a fateful decision to run into the St Helens Safeway to pick up a few items I needed for my truck: a new road-toothbrush, a replacement scratch-notepad for my used-up and decaying one, some double-A batteries, another pouch of jerky (what-the-hell), a coupla packs of Dentyne and whatnot.
Anyway…walkin’ in, I was greeted by a disturbing omen blaring over the Safeway “sound-system” in the form of a sickly Muzak rendition of "I Saw the Light" by Todd Rundgren. (The song’s chorus, arranged with an army of fake-oboes backing the Burt Bacharach-like trumpet melody, was particularly hair-raising.)
Yep, I would be seein’ the light alright.
After shaking this off by whistlin’ my own rendition of “Ring of Fire” and doing some typical truck driver shopping, I made my way back towards the storefront and there standing before me in the checkout-line was “that woman”.
You know who I mean: the one who lives in "world without mirrors". Her prominently overexposed body bears an uncanny resemblance to a gigantic dollop of soft-serve vanilla ice-cream at the Dairy Delish: white, pasty Michelin Man-skin tryin' to bust out of her undersized tank top, spilling over her cone-colored tan shorts and onto the floor .
Even more shocking to me is that she was browsing the most recent Us Magazine cover article discussing Jessica Simpson's New Bikini Body Secrets.
What was actually goin’ on in that skull of hers is anyone’s guess. I do know that my skull started screamin’, “Look away, look away Tom! But after scanning the useless-shit rack in the checkout-line for what seemed like an eternity, I knew there was no escape - my brain and eyes could no longer be averted from this inescapable visual torture. It’s like drivin’ by a car accident on the highway—you don’t want to look—but some evil force compels you to.
So it shouldn’t be hard, dear readers, to imagine the aforementioned woman’s ass: It looked like a single industrial-sized piece of Jello trying to escape the confines of its ridiculous packaging.
I tried to examine how clean the Safeway floor was…still, it was no use.
Next to her, stood one of her spawn - a nine year-old, turnip-shaped boy clad in a sleeveless “Orange County Choppers” t-shirt. He was incessantly begging Mom to add a jumbo 4-pack of Reese’s Peanut-Butter Cups to their foraging expedition.
And as if all of this weren’t enough punishment, my ears joined the party for more detailed assessments, following the cashier’s zombie-like scanning and resultant computer beeps of the vast inventory of items slowly moving down the checkout conveyor-belt: boxes of Hostess mini-donuts and Ding-Dongs, (beep-beep, beep-beep) huge "Big-Grab" sized Cheetoes, (beep-beep) family-sized tub of Cool-Whip, (beep-beep), an endless array of $1.29 Banquet TV dinners, (beep-beep, beep-beep, beep-beep...) 12-pack of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, (beep-beep).
I ended up recoiling in horror and faking as if I had suddenly remembered an important forgotten item...quickly makin' a beeline back to the meat-section.
After spying the hunter-gatherers pushin’ their two laiden carts out of Safeway, I calmly checked-out, hopped in my truck and fled towards Rainier and the bridge to Longview.
I have never looked forward to seeing the loadin’-dock foreman so much.
-Tom