The Check-out Divider.

As a person, I am a pretty big contradiction. My family moved me to a ten-acre plot of land out in the country when I was six months old. There I explored woods that had not been seen by the eyes of men in at least a couple of years. I delved into hidden caves deep within the earth, cleverly disguised by the dirt that filled them before I shoveled it out. I even designed and constructed magnificent fortresses out of secret materials I refined from that mysterious landscape.

It's practically Janjira.

When I was twelve I started working at a nearby cattle farm during the hours not reserved for school. I worked there for seven straight years, tossed hundreds of thousands of hay bales, listened to hours upon hours of country music. Such conditions understandably evoke a certain mental picture of the sort of fellow the subject of such a horrifying social experiment might logically develop into:

Boy you sure got a purty mouth.

Alas, however, it is not the case. If it were so, I would perhaps not be the south's least favorite son. Because in between 12 hour work days scooping cotton seeds and pregnancy checking cows (Google image search "pregnancy check cow"- it's intriguing) and trudging through schoolwork, I read books of the science fiction/fantasy variety and tinkered with computers. I now wear glasses and listen to Jonathan Coulton. This is closer to my appearance:

Yes. Nerds can be badass.

It's a funny thing how despite the best of childhood circumstances, a person can still go so terribly wrong. I find that in town where I work (let's call it "Little Flurmingdam"), I am shunned. I am mistrusted on sight. People decide they don't like me the moment they hear the lack of a soothing southern accent in my voice. The denizens of the city see subtle shadows of hidden open-mindedness in my eyes and immediately move to give me a five foot birth as they walk past me on the side walk. Or at least they would, if there was such a thing as caucasian pedestrians in Little Flurmingdam. Or sidewalks.

The circumstance outlined above is the reason, I think, I get a certain feeling of foreboding in the situation I'm about to describe. It's bugged me since I was very little. See, whenever I go to the grocery store and get in line to pay, there's one feature of the check-out line that I absolutely love... in concept. That feature is the set of dividers they keep on a little rail on the far side of the conveyor belt. In a normal society these dividers would serve to separate other customer's purchases from, say, mine. It thus would in theory insure beyond a doubt that the fine example of amoebic intelligence who works behind the register would not confuse scanning some of my items with some of the others in line and then get stuck having to call a CSM to register 16 to help him figure out the correction. That's how it would work. Except it can't. Not in the Little Flurmingdam. I challenge you to enter a super(ish)market or Wal-mart in Little Flurmingdam and find an open register that actually has a divider in the rail-- though you will find as many as you need in the closed aisles.

To tack on a more insulting injury, the other folks in line support the absence of these dividers. I know because I've tried to force the issue. Full of stubborn gusto, I once went over to one of the closed aisles, plucked a couple of dividers from the rail (there were three there-- as many as the rail could hold), and brought them over to the open aisle. All three other customers in line, from the middle aged straight-from-the-sermon lady in the floral print dress to the fat guy with the untrimmed facial hair, gave me looks of utter contempt and disgust. It was almost enough to shame me. Almost. But I held my head high and pretended the moment was not awkward in the least. When I was close enough to place my things on the conveyor belt, I used one divider on either side of my stuff, much to the poorly disguised disdain of my fellow patrons.

They can't help it. It's one of the many peculiar traits you'll notice about the people of Little Flurmingdam. Welcome to the south, you all.

Have you ever found yourself in a perfectly simple, logical situation made unnecessarily awkward by ignorant people around you?