VACCINATION

I was in line to check out at the local Food-Emporium not too long ago. There was a pile in my cart (or buggy, for those familiar with Southspeak) small enough to qualify me for the express lane, but too many people with tiny-ass orders had already had that idea. So I found a lane with just one occupant who was already in the midst of paying for her order.

This shouldn’t take too long, thought I to myself. Silly boy.

I waited for the previous customer to complete her transaction. Her cart was already piled high with full sacks, ready to go. What was the hold-up? Was she trying to write a check? Was there a button she needed to push on the little Electronickal Keypad?

No. She was telling the cashier some long-winded anecdote by way of making conversation. I could gauge the cashier’s level of interest by the not-especially-subtle eye roll she threw at me as the woman yammered on, oblivious to the growing queue of impatient would-be food purchasers behind me.

Finally, she finished her blathering and headed for the exit, whereupon I said to the cashier, “Wow... she must’ve been vaccinated with a phonograph needle!”

The cashier was old enough to get the joke; she chuckled and flashed a grin. But it suddenly dawned on me that most people living in these digital days will not understand the quip - which comes, incidentally, from the Marx Brothers movie Duck Soup - because they have no idea what a phonograph needle is.

Good Gawd, I am getting old.