Life’s Little Aggravations Never Change

There are certain things that never seem to change, even though another year has rolled around. I’ll place a sizable bet that the following experiences will be had by both you and me during 1987. For our kind of people, they’re as unavoidable as tomorrow.

Any line of people we get into at the supermarket’s checkout stand will be the slowest to move, even though we carefully selected that certain line because those in front of us had the least in their carts.

Invariably, one of the customers has to write a check and the supervisor has to be called to validate it. That same person will also produce a sheaf of coupons and will have two items that must be price checked.

When we’re in the bank, we will find ourselves behind someone who is working out an entire payroll in pennies, or so it seems.

At the pharmacy, we will wait behind a woman carrying a large purse, and she won’t be able to find her prescription in it. She will search frantically for that little piece of paper. Before long, the counter will be piled high with stuff from her purse--wads of Kleenex, keys, pens and pencils, sticks of gum, a small flashlight, innumerable receipts. From among these old receipts, after shuffling through them twice, she will find her prescription. (When you’re waiting behind such a woman, she will probably be my wife.)

When our telephone rings as we’re entering the house, it will stop before we reach it. When it rings again a little later it will be a stranger who will address us familiarly. The stranger offers us a free subscription to a magazine we’ve never heard of if we’ll answer a few questions. Meanwhile, the front doorbell rings.

We cut the call short to answer the doorbell. We are expecting United Parcel Service to deliver our spouse’s birthday present. Her birthday was yesterday. At the door is a boy from the block selling raffle tickets to buy new band uniforms for his school. When the birthday gift does arrive, it is the wrong size and color.

When we fly anywhere from a major airport, our plane will leave from the gate the farthest from the ticket counter, and the little wheels on the bottom of our bag won’t roll.

During our flight, when the captain announces a spectacular view just off the right side of the plane, we’ll be sitting on the left between two people who don’t care to look.

When we arrive at our destination, everybody else will seem to find their baggage on the turnstile before we do. We’re sure ours has been lost in Peoria. Ours always comes down the chute last of all.

When we phone a store to place an order, we’ll be put on hold for what seems forever while the clerk waits on a customer at the counter. When we go the store, we’ll wait forever while the clerk talks to a customer on the phone.

We’ll buy one of the latest models of, say, a car, a TV set, a refrigerator, a computer. Whatever we buy will always be the only model the manufacturer has had any trouble with, but not enough trouble for a recall.

We’ll have a splitting headache. No matter how many years we’ve been taking the lid off those child-proof aspirin bottles, it takes us an eternity to find the little mark to line the lid up with. We get mad and dig our nails into the lid and pull vigorously. The lid comes off easily, and aspirin tablets scatter over the floor.

When there’s a good show on TV, there’ll be another good show opposite it on another network. If there’s nothing good on either network, there isn’t anything good anywhere on the dial. We go to bed to read and the light bulb burns out. In short, you and I are the kind of people who go fishing in a boat with a friend. The friend catches all the fish, even though we use the same lures or baits. When the friend has to leave for home before we do, we welcome the opportunity to go fishing alone. We fish the rest of the day with no results. When the sun starts to set, a fish pokes his head out of the water beside us and says, “Say, where’s your friend?”

Yes, even the fish know some people are entitled to all the luck, but we’re never lucky and never will be. The only time in our life we have a winning number for a door prize, the prize will turn out to be a cheap plaster cast of Donald Duck.