I got hit by a car. Or I hit a car. with my cart. which had my baby son in it. we are fine, don't worry.
You see it was raining, so we parked in the garage, and having I left my employee appreciation St. Luke's hospital umbrella at the YMCA two weeks ago, (and apparently they give your umbrella away to other people if you don't claim it within the week) I did not have an umbrella.
So from the garage to the building is only about 20 feet. So I got my excited voice on for Ford, explaining that we would run really fast and get a little wet. And I started to run...and then i heard the horn and saw the minivan that was coming out of the garage really really fast, and I couldn't stop and I ran right into the side of the front of the van. So I guess you could say that I hit them.
Now here is what is amazing. You would think that my response would be to stop, check the baby, check their car, find out why they were driving so fast, etc. Nope. my response is to run across the street and pretend like nothing happened. This is the same reaction I had in college when running on the treadmill at the Rec. when I lost my footing and flew off the back of the treadmill into some unsuspecting man's arms who happened to be walking behind me at that same instant. I jumped out of his arms and ran back to the treadmill and said in a voice way too loud (because I had headphones on) "I'm okay! I'm okay!" and started running again.
Apparently my "flight" response to danger overtakes me.
So I am under the awning of the Costco and a woman asks me if I am okay. And I say yes, I am fine and pretend that nothing happened, while i look over my shoulder to see the van just sitting there. and I wonder...are they checking to see if i hurt their car? or are they worried that they drove into a mother and baby? But my flight response kicked in again and I ran into the store before I could put more thoughts together.
Once inside I finally took a breath, checked the baby, counted my blessings, and just stood in the snack aisle for about 5 minutes until I could think straight again.
Not that I can ever think straight in Costco. Who can? I believe that store has some sort of hypnotic power inside of it that drives you, trance-like in search of samples of food that you don't want to eat, and bargains for things that you hadn't planned on buying. For instance, every time I am there I stare at the large number of individually packaged snacks and spend a really long time trying to decide which snacks we must have because there are so many to choose from. Do I want the Peperidge farm snacks or Nabisco? Maybe we should be healthy and get the Annie's bunny snacks again. and ooh look at those fancy new Kettle chip/Stacy's Pita chip snack packs. What the heck? I am here for paper towels!
I think i have mentioned it here before, but the movie Idiocracy comes to mind so often to me. It is a dark, weird comedy about the sad state of the future of the United States - there is a lot of gross butt-like humor in the movie, but also many truisms that are starkly frightening. One of them is that Costco becomes the only store and the center all activity in society. Everything happens at Costco in the future - even transportation. This feels entirely possible to me.
I noticed that i am not the only person spellbound by the store. I witnessed today another seemingly normal lady push her cart right into a poll in the middle of an aisle. she wasn't even on a cell phone, just totally distracted by all the large quantities of moderately well price choices around her. I met another woman in front of the $34.99 Calvin Klein sheet sets who had the same look on her face. She and I stood there staring at the sheets for at least 2 minutes, and I am sure she was thinking the same things I was: " 35 dollars for sheets...that's not bad...plus they are Calvin Klein...that seems really good for Calvin Klein...do i even need sheets...well, not really...but I wonder if I don't get these sheets if they will be gone the next time I am here....and I guess that I could use some more sheets, mine are a little old..." I am proud to say that I did not buy another set of these sheets as I had been contemplating, but my friend next to me did give in to the voices.
Maybe i drove my cart right into that car because I was just so excited to get in to the store to see how much I could save using the coupon book today. Maybe the man in the Odyssey almost hit me because he had not yet shaken himself from the Costco trance. Whatever the reason, I am glad we are okay, and I was thankful that Ford got an entire smoothie sample while we were there.
1. The Orca is A.W.E.S.O.M.E.
ReplyDelete2. I also have a Special Excited Voice that I had to use today as we were walking to the Children's Museum in the rain because I am too cheap to park in the garage.
3. I think I simply cannot join Costco because I went to Target night before last with ONE thing on my list (paper towels, incidentally) and spent $60. Costco would be very, very dangerous.