Sunday, March 27, 2011

Helpful

Too many different kinds of cheese and things
just get too confusing, which things often
are. You would like to purchase a single
     scrub pad
but they only seem to be available
in bundles of a dozen or more
and you know that you will not use
a dozen scrub pads in what is left
     of this lifetime.

If you ran, say, a summer camp
or a prison, or maybe if you were
     a profligate breeder
utterly cowed by the most obscure
pronouncements of scripture
you might have use for a cask of
pork and beans or a package
of toilet paper large enough
to possibly float you to safety
in the event of a ship wreck.

You certainly don't need forty AA batteries
or a bag of jerked meat that could feed
a party of lost explorers for a significant period
     of lostness.
No, what you want is a single
scrub pad to clean your single
frying pan, but you don't need it
     that bad.

The old fellow at the entrance
is wearing a gold paper crown
that has the word HELPFUL
inscribed on it in some sort of mock
medieval font, and as you leave
empty-handed he offers
what almost seems like a genuine smile,
claps his hands enthusiastically,
and says, "I hope you found
what you were looking for!"
Which, of course, you have not
even as you suddenly sense that
     you have.

2 comments:

  1. Costco just wasn't made for the single man, or even a couple. You need a Brady Bunch to make it worthwhile. Or a large birthday party.

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  2. i went to costco for the first time recently, and while i'm fairly comfortable in big box stores (visits to home depot and menards being a staple of our profession, excuse the pun), i must say that it was almost beyond belief. i felt like i was wandering lost in some crazy imaginary blog-post-world. when a gray-haired man with an expensive haircut screamed and honked and almost drove his sports car over a cartful of small children in the parking lot, then i was sure that i had been caught in a warp and transported out of minnesota. because that just wasn't nice.

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