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The Wrong Line

My kids say I always pick the wrong line. Put me in a bank or airport or a grocery store, and whichever line I get in, it will move the slowest.

That's why I love my local Albertson's, with its "three's a crowd" rule. If more than three people are in line, they open a new one. I also like those long single lines that only break into multiples at the end. But sometimes, you just have to take deep breaths.

That's what I was doing the other morning at the corner Albertson's. There was a line with one lady in it with about a thousand items in her basket, and one line with an older gentleman who had a total of three items that, together, probably cost less than $5.

Easy call, right? Wrong.

I got behind the older gentleman with the three items. By the time he was done, or I was, I had read People magazine cover to cover, along with all the tabloids.

The first problem was that he couldn't find his courtesy card. Or rather, he kept showing the checker the wrong one. No, the checker said to him, over and over, that is the CVS card (which happens to be red). This is Albertson's. The Albertson's card is blue.

He took out his wallet. He put away his wallet. I learned all the lies about Brittany. Deep breath. Again, he showed him the wrong card. Again, he took out the wallet. Patience, I told myself. Someday, hopefully anyway, you're going to be old. Patience, I told the guy standing behind me, whose line-picking skill was clearly even worse than mine. Two lines over, Ms. Megashopper was whisking those items out of her basket like it was a house on fire.

When the checker finally had totaled his three items, which came to something in the $4 range, I watched in horror as the elderly man took out his wallet again to get his credit card. A credit card for three items? It didn't read on the first sweep. He put it in backward. Or the second. Upside down, I think. I almost offered to do it for him, but the very pleasant checker, who is the assistant manager in real life, did the honors, instead.

What could be next? He couldn't find his shopping list. But wasn't he done shopping? Isn't that what it means when, finally, you pay?

Not exactly. From somewhere, a list emerged. He studied it carefully, not moving, oblivious to the milk warming and the ice cream melting behind him. I've been to this store three times now, he said to the checker-assistant manager, looking for onion soup mix, powdered, and you don't carry it anymore.

Now, even I could have told him that of course they still carried powdered onion soup mix, how else was anyone going to eat potato chips and dip, and it was in the soup aisle, where it always is. But I didn't have to tell him. The assistant manager, to his credit (being kind to the elderly, to those at the beginning and the end of life, is a measure of our character, the late Hubert Humphrey used to say), not only told him, he sent one of the baggers to get the onion soup. He then told one of the young women at the coffee stand to open up the next checkstand for the sole purpose of ringing out this man's purchase of dry soup.

In a second, the bagger was back with the soup, the next checkstand was open, and I watched as the process repeated itself: First, he couldn't find his courtesy card, so he showed the wrong one.

Then, he had to find his credit card, then figure out how to sweep it through the machine, then take the bag with the onion soup mix and add it to his other bags. All of which took him about the same time as it took me to spend hundreds of dollars on food that won't feed my kids for a week.

I left the store feeling lucky. Lucky that I shopped at a store nice enough to take extra time with a very slow, confused gentleman. Lucky that my kids are still at home and that the day hasn't come yet when a trip to the market for me involves the purchase of four items totaling less than four dollars. Lucky to feel part of my community.

That feeling of warmth continued as I pushed my cart to my car, unloaded all the bags in the trunk and back seat, and got in to start the engine.

And then it stopped. Flat. Getting into the car next to me, slowly, painfully slowly, almost dropping one of his four items, was the older man. He was alone. He looked very confused, as he had from the moment I saw him in the market.

But now he was armed with a dangerous weapon. He was about to drive.

If you can't tell the difference between the red CVS card and the blue Albertson's one, if you can't find the soup in three tries, figure out how to pay by credit card in two, find your shopping list at all, if you can't see what's staring you in the face on aisle eight, how are you going to see the stop sign at the corner (and it's my corner), the kid who races into the street for a ball (and it's my neighbor's kid), the dog who gets out when the gardener lets him out (who could be mine), the teenager who takes the turn too wide on her first trip around the block?

If shopping is such a challenge that it takes all the generosity of spirit of customers and employees alike not to tell you to get a move on, what about driving?

I waited (and it took awhile) for the man to get his bearings and back out. Then he came to a complete stop, for no apparent reason, and sat stopped while the cars behind him started to honk. Then he started, painfully slowly, to literally crawl out of the lot. I thought if he didn't hit someone, or someone didn't hit him, right there, they probably would the minute they escaped his turtle's pace.

I live in Santa Monica, Calif. It was just a few years ago that an elderly man plowed into our local farmers market at midday, apparently pressing the accelerator instead of the brake, and cost numerous shoppers and vendors their lives. Among the teenagers in my daughter's crowd, Santa Monica is known as the toughest place to get a license, because ever since then, they expect applicants to know how to drive.

Fine. But 16-year-olds tend to get better with experience, no matter how rocky they are on the day they take the road test. Age does not improve elderly driving.

My son is almost 15. He thinks he should be able to drive. He claims he'd be as good as his sister. I'm sure there are 14- and 15-year-olds who would be fine drivers. But we set the line at 16. Below that age, it doesn't matter how well you drive. It's arbitrary, but so what? We need to have a line, even if it's not perfect, even if it includes some people who could drive perfectly well. Better to keep a few good drivers off the road than risk even more bad ones. Isn't the same true of drivers over 80?

To find out more about Susan Estrich, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.