The scene: Walgreens drugstore. A Monday afternoon, early December.
The motive: I was shopping. Basic supplies. Toothpaste, bathroom cleaner, shampoo, etc.

Then, Satan stepped in.

I was in the checkout line, hand basket full of stuff, waiting behind two women. The other two cash registers were full of people in line, so I was in the right place to be.

Then woman number one started bitching about how her photos that Walgreen's was developing had gone missing, loudly proclaiming that she was absolutely NOT leaving until they were found or accounted for. This moment of sunshine was strenghtened by the beginning of the lamest version ever of "Jinglebell Rock" being pumped out of the store's numerous speakers, one of which was directly above my head. This version was so... so... WHITE, that it would have been considered bland by June Cleaver.

The old woman in front of me seemed to disagree. She started doing the most annoying little knee-bend bop in time with the music.

Jingle bell (down)
Jingle bell (up)
Jingle bell (down)
Rock (up)
Jingle bell (down)
somethingorother (up)
and jingle bell (down)
somethingelse (up)

Down and up, bend those knees, stand up straight, tap those corn-infested, arthritic feet. It was a one-woman show of the Century Village workout routine that gets those frail hearts a-pound, pound, pounding!

Forgive me, Lord. I am too young, too mentally weak, to see such sights. It PAINED me, it SCARRED me. I am sorry, oh Lord, but I would have preferred to watch the old woman go down on her ancient hubby. This was just way too disturbing to witness. Please spare me from future atrocities of a similar nature.

The picture wench was still not moving. And the second teller was there, trying to get her cash till in, and the first teller's out. Shift change, everybody. But that wasn't about to happen while Miss "Fuck the customers in line behind me I'm not moving" was yelling at both of them, and occasionally glancing back at Boppie Momma and me for support and approval.

I approved by going to another line. It was longer, but it was moving. I believe it was also a mistake to go there.

Let me explain.

Recently, my friend and his wife bought themselves an electronic keyboard - one of those $200 jobs that are better than nothing, but only slightly so. This keyboard had a feature for the musically inept. Namely, it would play songs for you. You simply enetered the three-digit code corresponding to the song you wanted mangled at the time, such code conveniently displayed on the Casio plastic cover, and pressed one. Single. Button.

That's all it took to mangle such classics as Bach's "Fugue in d minor," or Three Dog Night's "Joy to the World." Have you ever heard a cheesy synthesized piano clinking away to "Jeremia was a bullfrog?" You haven't suffered until it's been unleashed on you.

Being the kind of friend that I am, I decided to torture everyone in a three-block radius by selecting the most annoying songs, and letting the keyboard happily hum them for us at a very high volume. It was ten minutes and several songs later that my friend finally resorted to death threats involving strategically placed drops of acid and some form of bondage that didn't seem like a lot of fun at the time before I finally stopped "Swanee River" and "Crocodile Rock" from filling his head with visions of dead sugarplum fairies and roadkill.

God decided to strike back. I don't feel I deserved it.

He unleashed Daddy Lucifer on me, and Satan made sure that Walgreen's was the proud provider of cheap keyboards, handily on display on an end-cap, strategically placed right next to the FUCKING CHECKOUT LINE I HAD JUST MOVED TO! (Bold letters added as a cheap version of foresight and premonition.)

Even I had the decency of killing every Casiomambo in its infancy, moving on to an extraordinarily high quantity of songs in those painful ten minutes that we will all do our best to forget ever happened. Walgreen's (and Daddy Beelzebub) were not so kind.

Their display was louder than mine. They didn't have anyone to change the song. They had their keyboard playing -- nay, singing -- nay, BRAYING -- to us. They wanted to annoy us so badly that we were sure to buy up every remaining keyboard just to make the bad men stop!

They let "Jingle Bells" play out in its entirety. Over and over again. No rock this time, just the old yuletime classic. A whiney electronic whimsy of pain, with velveeta drooping from the accompanying chord structure and additive sound effects. It didn't stop. It played the entire time I was in line, an eternity by any sane person's standards. Even longer by standards set by lunatics such as myself.

I made the mistake of asking the Hispanic saleswoman (in a deep, resonant, booming voice) if her Christmas bonus was three swings with a heavy sledgehammer at the aforementioned endcap section. The salesperson with the highest sales volume got to go first, right? I also think I added some thoughts about suicide being a much better alternative to that form of inhumane torture.

It was then that I felt the burning in my head. A boiling in my brain as every old yenta (and yentile) in the line wished me death and glared at me with eyes of hate, the collective rays of evil focused and intensified by their coke-bottle glasses.

I swear to you all, I barely escaped with my life.

I will never, ever, ever again torture my friends with cheesy keyboard sounds, unless we are sufficiently far enough away from Christmas to be sure that by the time it rolls around, the PFU's (Punishing Forces of the Universe) have all forgotten my evil transgression against humanity.

Until then, be warned. Walgreens is off limits.

© 2000, Michael Yanovich. www.mentalsnot.com