Originally published in The Plain Talker, October 2007
You don't have to live for long before you realize that people come in all sorts of shapes, sizes, colors and intelligence levels. Especially intelligence levels; that one seems to know no boundaries. You can look at any demographical cross-section, and the chances are good that almost every intelligence level will be represented.
That being said, there are two situations, which almost always prove to be equalizers. Put a human of any intelligence into these situations, and they consistently-- and almost immediately-- descend to a certain level, a level that should embarrass them.
The first of these situations is: cell phone in hand. A perfectly normal person of above average intelligence becomes a blithering airhead once he (or she) pushes the button to answer a cell phone. Take, for instance, the guy standing in the checkout line, waiting for his turn at the register. His phone rings, and he answers… and this is what you, and everyone within shouting range, hears: "Hello?… Nothing much, just standing in line at Wal-Mart… Not much, I had to come pick up some penicillin, so I bought a few other things too… Oh, just some Preparation-H, a box of Ex-Lax, and a Happy Belated Anniversary card for the wife… I know, I can't believe I forgot, either; I guess I got so involved in playing poker on-line that I forgot a lot of things… OK, well, I'll call you when I get home. Bye."
Now, to look at this guy, you'd never take him for someone who would walk into a store and loudly announce "I'm here to buy ointment for my hemorrhoids, a laxative because I've been constipated, and a card for my wife because I got so busy playing on the Internet that I forgot our anniversary!" And you would be right; he would never do that. Who would? Put as soon as he put the cell phone to his ear, he did exactly what you-- and he-- never thought he would do. It's as if his brain was telling him "While you are on the cell phone, you are surrounded with the Cloak of Invisibility and the Hat That Muffles All Sound; feel free to say and do anything."
And if you think it's bad when he is standing in line, you should see him when he's behind the wheel of his car. Normally, he is the guy who never removes his hands from the "10 and 2" position, who never drives more than five miles below the speed limit, and who never makes a turn without using his turn lights and hand signals. There is no reason to believe that he is anything other than the guy who would never talk on the phone while driving. But once that phone rings, he becomes the newly licensed 16-year-old who is bound and determined to do all of the things that he wasn't allowed to do with an adult in the car. Slowing down, speeding up, swerving… and completely oblivious to it all, because the cell phone has eaten his brain.
(My wife always wonders why people can carry on a conversation with someone who is in the car without it affecting their driving one bit, but they can't carry on the same conversation with the same person over the cell phone without becoming a Driving School Drop-outs. She's got a point.)
But, when it comes to making people stupid, cell phones are not the worst offenders. Nope the thing that seems to make almost everyone more stupid the second they have it in their hands is… the shopping cart.
Much like the cell phone's Cloak of Invisibility, there is Shopping Cart Cape of Narrowness. If you have ever entered an aisle of a grocery store, you've seen the person wearing the Cape of Narrowness. It's that person who has parked her (or his) cart diagonally across the left half of the aisle while scanning items on the right side. A super-model on a crash diet couldn't squeeze through the tiny space between the cart and the display, but the shopping cart driver seems oblivious to the roadblock she is causing.
(And why is it that more often than not, these people will have parked their cart in the same part of the aisle that is already partially blocked by a cardboard display rack? I know the thought process isn't "There's not enough room to block the whole aisle if I stop right here, so I'll move down six feet and park right beside that rack; that should do it!" Is it?)
I guess there's something about gripping the handle of the shopping cart that disengages the part of the brain that would normally make you realize that these other people with carts are also shopping, and that chances are they might be wanting to buy some of the things that your cart is blocking, and so maybe it's really not a good idea to stand in one spot while trying to decide whether you want the Crest Toothpaste with Tartar Control, or the Crest with Whitening.
I think I saw the worst offender ever not long ago. The store at which I shop offers six different styles and sizes of shopping carts. (No, really; six of them.) There is the small hand basket, for when you don't need more than a few items. There's the cart on which you can rest your hand basket, for when you only need a few items but you don't feel like carrying them. There's the standard cart, the shallow cart --which is the same width and length as the standard, just not as deep-- and the wide-but-shallow cart, which holds as much as the standard cart, but you don't have to bend over as far to get the stuff in the bottom. And of course there is the standard cart with the giant plastic racecar attachment; these carts, of course, are those that are pushed the slowest.
One day, I saw the worst offender of shopping cart induced brain cramps that I ever hope to see. I first saw her in the cereal aisle, which in my store is the second full-length aisle. Her cart was blocking several feet worth of cereal boxes, and she was blocking several feet more, as she pondered which cereal to buy. Of course, she was blocking my access to the cereal I wanted, and didn't hear my "excuse me;" it was as if she never took off the Hat That Muffles All Sound when she (no doubt) was talking on the cell phone earlier.
I decided to do the rest of my shopping and hit the cereal aisle on the way out; by that time, she would have moved on to block some other aisle. Or so I thought; when I returned several minutes later, she had barely moved. And she still wasn't going to let me reach around her to get the box of cereal I wanted, so I cruised up and down a different aisle for a minute or two. Sure enough, by the time returned to the cereal aisle she had picked the box she wanted, and was moving out of the way. I grabbed a box, and headed for the checkout line.
At this point, my usual luck took over, and I found myself in the slowest line. (It never fails.) By the time I got through the line and headed for the door, guess who I was behind? So I trudged along behind her at her snail-like pace, until I we got to the parking lot and I could get around her.
I usually find myself parked far from the front door of the store; if I'm in a hurry, it's usually much faster to park in the first available spot and start walking than it is to sit in the car, waiting for the perfect spot to open up. And if I'm not in a hurry I figure, what the heck, I could use the exercise anyway. Miss Slowpoke obviously waited around for a spot right next to the store to open up, because by the time I had unloaded my cart and was returning it to the rack near the store, I found myself behind her again.
She was trying, with no luck, to get her part to fit into the cart in front of it; give her credit for realizing that they build them with those swinging back panels for a reason. But don't give her any credit for knowing how to make the carts nest together; after a minute or so of trying, she gave up and walked away. Then I saw what the problem was: she had been trying to make her standard cart nest with one of the shallow carts! In other words, she had been trying to fit a square peg into a smaller, rectangular hole.
The scary thing is, I have little doubt that the first thing she did after she got in the car was to pull out her cell phone and start dialing…. Fortunately, we were headed in opposite directions!