Pet Peeves and Positive People

I was waiting in the checkout line at the grocery store and the woman in front of me was standing at the register watching her groceries slide over the scanner. That’s fine – probably the most interesting thing she’s seen all day. But only when the clerk was all done and announced the total, did this woman finally reach into her purse, rummage around for her checkbook and start writing a check. She stopped writing, completely... twice... to turn around to say something to the little boy who was patiently waiting in her cart. I think it took as long for her to get that check written as it had taken her to shop in the first place.

(I am thinking about this now only because I have been in the disappointing position of not being able to buy ice cream at the grocery store any longer because it takes so long to go through the checkout, load the groceries in the car and drive the 12 miles or so back to the house in the heat. That people can further slow me down with such idiotic behavior might be cause to revise my fresh produce purchases as well.)

Anyway, this prompted me to start ticking off a list of my pet peeves as I finally left the store (slow checkouts being, at that point, #1, followed closely by stepping-on-gum-in-parking-lots and degenerating quickly into mad thoughts of dust bunnies and such at home…) I had to bring myself up short and revise my strategy for getting through the week.

I admire positive people. I would love to think I am one of them. I certainly am a “happy” person. But, “positive?” More and more the evidence suggests that I am not. Surely the “glass half full” kind of gal would have been spending the extra time in the checkout line gleefully pouring through the tabloids. I should be worried. But, perversely, I am not. The world needs cynics too. And peevish people. Happy to oblige.