A Nasty Week...

It’s been a bad week in Lake Wobegon, I’m glad to see it over.

The week contained a startling earthquake, a pretty spectacular thunderstorm with a reported tornado on the base, and now the chance of whatever Irene brings. I am nervous about a plague of locusts. And, the little things that happened didn’t help. I inadvertently did a “reply all” to an email that should have been “reply” which brought to mind that commercial where the office mate says “you replied to all! You replied to all!. A joke in that case not me. Felt exactly like that guy. Fortunately it was only a sort of a snappy reply rather than anything egregious, but you still feel like the Southwest airlines “wanna get away?” And then just now at the supermarket, where more water was flowing out the door than over Niagara Falls, another of my hot buttons got pushed. Everybody was scouring the milk, toilet paper, the water and bread (one lady remarked “it must be a snowstorm!”) from the shelves, so lines at the checkout were long. Most people share my aversion to the “automatic” lanes, which never work and still prefer a human. As did I, so I got in a line with about four loaded carts ahead of me. The only other human line was in about the same condition. After about five minutes, the PA system announced “Greg and Bob, we need you at the front of the store”. Sure enough, pretty soon they appeared and started fiddling with the cash registers. Eventually the little light went on, and an announcement confirmed “lanes 10 and 11 are now open!”. The gold rush had nothing on what ensued next. People two carts behind me RAN to the vacant lanes with no thought of the people who had been standing in line a long time before the rushers arrived. In fact, if the little lady ahead of me tried she surely would have gone under the wheels. Cannot people be civil? I always ask and get proven wrong. My statement of “excuse me, this lady was before you” got an icy stare. I remember in St. Louis at Schnuck’s if this situation occurred, the checker would walk into the line, grab the cart of the next in line and take it himself to the line.

But these things were mere aggravations in light of a couple of other things this week. It marked the year’s anniversary of the passing of Bob Dieckelman, our long time GVT friend and unfailing Notre Dame fan. On top of that, another tragic occurrance this week, when I learned of another untimely death, my friend Kirk MacKinnon. I had grown close to Kirk over the past couple of years sharing judging duties at food events, and through our mutual activities at our Rotary club. It’s just such an empty feeling when you get that call out of the blue. What a feeling of helplessness. No rational explanation as to why somebody who was here yesterday is not anymore. More of a reason to enjoy your friends each day, and maybe let that person who is ahead of you in line, go first. Huge holes in your heart..

And tomorrow, Irene will bring what she will, so who knows when the next Feeder will remind you to

DFD

and be safe..