One time, when I was a teenager, I found myself in a situation where I felt I might need a condom. We won’t get into the details, but that’s where I was. Back in the 80’s it wasn’t quite as easy to find an open shop carrying such things, especially when you didn’t have a car, so I ended up in a pharmacy within walking distance of the house I’d grown up in. I’d been shopping there all my life, and usually, after 7 o’clock I could count on the crusty old man who ran the place to be sitting behind the counter.

But this fateful night, it was the elderly woman I took to be his wife at the register. With great inner fortitude (or maybe it was just desperate lust) I got the little box from the back of the store and brought it to the front counter. She looked down at my intended purchase for several long seconds. Then she looked me in the eye with a mix of contempt, disgust, and perhaps sadness as she saw the little boy who used to buy Mother’s Day cards here with pocket change now all growed up and doing the nasty.

With a low growl she asked, “Is that all?”

I hesitated only a moment, and then reached to one of the boxes in front of the counter. I slapped an extra large Snickers bar on the counter and said, “I’ll have this too.”

I don’t know if she got the joke, but at the time, you always saw Snickers commercials on TV about being low on energy until you had a Snickers bar. Then you were revved up and ready to go because Snicker “really satisfies”. I thought it was funny – an early example of the true wiseass jerk I would mature into.

In any event, I was reminded of this whole sordid little moment in my post-adolescent history just the other day at the Rite-Aid by work. We recently moved offices, to a huge plaza with offices on the back side of the building, and tons of retail establishments in front. Yeah, it feels a little like working in a strip mall, at least in the parking lot, but the access to A&P, Subway, BK, Blockbuster, and a slew of delis, pizza places, liquor stores, etc. all within walking distance more than makes up for it.

So I went into the Rite-Aid with a coworker for the first time the other day. When we were standing on line, I noticed the purchases of a woman in front of us. She was normal looking. Not heavy, not skinny, mid-length brown hair, and somewhere around 30. She was buying two bags of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups (buy one get one 50% off) and a box of Alli. I thought it was some sort of feminine hygiene product, or maybe fancy pants salon style hair care stuff. Then I did my research. It’s a weight loss pill.

So tell me this, couldn’t she have saved a lot of money by skipping the candy and the pills? I mean, isn’t one just offsetting the other? Maybe she should have gone next door and bought a freakin’ apple and called it a day.

But it did make me think of a funny story, so we won’t be too mean and judgemental. Just a little.