patience.

I went to Target yesterday, just to grab a few things. I wasn't in a hurry ... but I did want to take Brok for a hike and it was getting later and later in the afternoon. And there were a million people at Target, so all of the check-out lines were monstrous. I grabbed my 3 or 4 items and went to stand in the shortest line I could find ... behind two nice looking gals. Probably college students, and the one buying something was about 6'1" and weighed maybe 110 lbs. I hated her for a second.

So these two girls get up to the cashier, and she scans their single item. $4.77. It took her, no lie, 2 minutes to dig around in her clutch looking for her debit card.... realize it wasn't in that pocket, check the other pocket and finally produce her card. She then slid the card through the reader backwards and just sat there staring at the machine. Ummmm, nothing's happening. The cashier told her to slide it the other way, so she did. Then it took her another 2 minutes to remember and enter her PIN number. Cash back? Do you want to put it all on this card? (yes, I have the Target credit card machine questions memorized). Another minute or so with those difficult questions ........ declined. So she pulls that clutch back out, digs around for the card again, slides it backwards again, then runs it as credit.

Here comes the hard part for me to understand. The screen has a little box for your signature, right? And it says "sign in the box", right? Pretty basic, RIGHT?? Nope. She tried pushing the enter button at least 7 times before the cashier said, "you have to sign in the box first ...." So she signed and hit enter again and that was that. At this point I had a couple of thoughts go through my head. OH MY HECK was one of them, and then I immediately thought, "boy I need to be more patient." And then, that cute little blonde 17 year old cashier said to me, "I think maybe that was her first time buying anything .... ever."

Maybe I'm not so impatient after all ... and maybe that story was a lot more funny in person. Either way, here are some pictures from a hike Brok and I took in the 65 degree weather in a t-shirt in Utah in January (yesterday):

for Blaine