You Don’t Know What Other People Are Thinking

So yeah, my life is a bit dull right now.

I don’t even have anything to complain about.

This may explain why I’m writing a second grocery store piece in less than a year.

Do you ever wonder if the cashier judges you by what you have in your cart?

I do.

For instance, there was the time I took my iguana to the veterinarian because she had a weird bump on her face. The vet informed me that it was an abscess and I should just put some hemorrhoid cream on it.

So, off I went to the grocery store to make the purchase. Everything was going well until I get up to the checkout counter and the Preparation H didn’t have a price on it.

Bear with me here. It was 1995, before computers took over everything and automatically knew all of the prices.

In any case, the really cute college girl behind the register picked up my hemorrhoid cream and tried to scan it but it wouldn’t scan. She grabbed that microphone, the one that registers used to have, to ask for a price check.

Cute Cashier over the microphone: I need a price check on the Preparation H.

Me: It’s for my lizard.

A voice yelling from somewhere in the store: What kind?

Cashier over the microphone: Maximum Strength.

Me: There’s a sore on it.

(Awkward silence.)

They did get eventually get the price figured out. I paid for the cream and left.

As I walked out to my truck, I felt sort of embarrassed that the the cashier probably thought I had hemorrhoids.

Not that there’s anything shameful about having them. It’s a medical condition that happens to lots of people. We treat it and move on.

But, it is a sensitive area.

And she was very attractive. Certainly someone I would’ve wanted to find me attractive.

And visualizing me applying the cream to myself probably wasn’t going to score me any points with her.

But here’s the thing: I don’t really know what she was thinking.

Our whole interaction could have been irrelevant to her because she was engrossed in the details of her own life. Maybe she was looking forward to her plans for that night, or maybe she had a new puppy at home that she was excited about.

Or maybe our meeting was funny for a moment and then she let it go.

I’ll never know.

Today I can look back on this and see the humor in it.

And I’m really working on trying to remember that I never know what someone’s thinking. It’s challenging sometimes, especially at the moment when my speculations arise.

I try remind myself that my thoughts are almost always negative.

That’s just how I seem to be wired.

The lack of an email response doesn’t mean that someone has stopped liking me. The unanswered text message does not spell certain doom for a relationship.

Things come up in life. People get busy or sidetracked.

Most of the time I’m just imagining the worst.

And I wish there was a cream for that.