so my title for this blog entry may be a little misleading. in defense of target, i was hostile before i walked through their automatic doors this morning. the whole reason for the trip is that i am unemployed again. i wonder if people who work ever even go to target. there are very few things in target that i can't live without - unless, of course, i am unemployed. so today, i went for the sole purpose of purchasing these skinny cow brand candy bars. they are really good in a 110-calories kind of way.
when i go to target because of unemployment (again, redundant), i sometimes will bring a single recyclable bag to limit my purchase. so today, i dragged my one bag, spilling over with really soft pajama bottoms, some dog treats (they were on sale!), contact solution - in bulk (it was a better deal that way, really), and the skinny cow bars, to the register where there was an unusually long line. i noticed that the woman who got in line behind me had a baby car seat in her shopping cart. this prompted me to quickly look away. but not before i saw the woman behind her peering into the cart at the baby and asking in an interested, perhaps nostalgic, way, "how old?" i sighed.
the mother shopper quickly responded with "eleven days." i tried so hard to tune it out. i knew that an inane conversation about newborns would worsen my mood. and sure enough, the conversation continued and i learned that this was mother shopper's third baby and that her husband kept saying each baby was the last, but she just couldn't help herself, she just couldn't get enough babies.
i, on the other hand, couldn't unload my unnecessary items onto the belt fast enough. i tried to engage the checkout woman so that i wouldn't hear anymore. it failed. i learned that mother shopper's oldest was in kindergarten and that she too was just so excited about the new baby.
finally, i got my recyclable bag - and the extra plastic one i needed since all of my merchandise didn't fit- and i all but ran to the parking lot. i escaped without learning anything else about her or her baby. i hurried home, cracked open my giant bag of individually packaged sour patch kid halloween candy and started googling resume templates.
