Friends, we still have a long way to go. A long way.
Technology for the most part has made our life easier and for that, we should be grateful. This story though, will combine technology and something we just cannot figure out and I am not sure we ever will.
Let’s start with the self-check out lines at our grocery stores. I love them because you can get in and out quickly. Most of the time. If you happen though, like me, to get behind someone who cannot figure it out, you might as well start your Christmas shopping because you will be there that long. When I see that someone has bought bananas or grapes and they search for the produce key, you’d have better luck searching for Noah’s Ark than them figuring this out.
Then if you get a person in front of you that is paying in cash, oh my goodness. They look at the machine, look at you, look at machine, look at you, machine, you, and on and on and on. I actually tried to help someone one time do that and grabbed their $20 dollar bill to insert it and she jerked it out of my hand and said, “I can do this!” I laughed because she had asked me to help her out.
My favorite though is the wanderer. That person that cannot figure the self-checkout for the life of them. Instead of ringing the bell, or pressing help, they look around so helpless as if they are looking for their dog on the front porch who just ran off. Then they look down, get confused again, and look back up. This happens all the time and you’ll start to notice and will probably laugh because that will stop you from crying.
I have a friend who will not use the self-checkout and his reasoning is that, “They don’t pay me to scan my own groceries. I want them to do it. I don’t care how long it takes.” Atta-boy, fight that power.
Second thing is roundabouts. We has a society will never ever figure out roundabouts. We just won’t and that is okay. I think. There is one at the end of Two Rivers Parkway near Opry Mills which has become comedy central to me. Every single time I go through there when there are two or more cars, it turns into a combination of the wild wild west and the Shriners in a Christmas parade. Cars going this way, cars going that way, zipping past you, then circling back around and coming so close you can hi-five them.
Or, everyone sits there and stares at each other. Then one car goes, then stops. Other car hesitates, then goes, then stops because first car is now going. Third car just sits there until a car comes and they pull out, almost hitting car that is coming and they will yell at each other and while that is happening, the other car almost rear-ends them, then honks horn, which makes the other two cars mad and they don’t go anywhere. Everyone wants to go, yet no one wants to.
There is a roundabout in downtown Nashville, not the naked statues one, but this is by all the hotels and it is complete and utter chaos. There is a lane to go around. There is a lane that almost goes around but is a turning lane and that confuses the car waiting to go because no one signals and you are unsure because at the last second, they realize they’re in the wrong lane and switch back quickly. I have seen this happen and pulled out because they were in the turning lane, they switched lanes and flipped me off. I literally laughed out loud for 15 minutes after that.
Again, we have a long way to go with self-check out lanes and roundabouts. I have learned to just sit and laugh because as the great philosopher Jimmy Buffet put it so well, “If we didn’t laugh, we would all go insane.”
