Stuck

I’ve been putting off going to CVS for days. Don’t get me wrong. I love love love perusing the displays of cheap Christmas candy and ornaments, looking at hair dye and wondering if I could pull off magenta (no), and wondering what combination of vitamins will magically fix me. But I didn’t feel like driving there. There’s construction right in front of the store and that annoys me.

But my prescription was in, and if I want to go to the dentist next week without having a full-blown panic attack, there was a sedative waiting for me with my name on it. Literally.

The construction was still happening. And I think all of the construction workers were parked in the lot because there was one teeny little space left. Using my amazing powers of old-school Tetris playing, I calculated I could fit into that spot. And I did. With a little luck and praying.

I did my shopping. I avoided all the people coughing in the flu-drug area. I meandered around the woman in a sweatsuit looking at personal lubricants. I did not make eye contact with the grumpy employee moving all the Halloween candy to the Rejected By The Populace area for 50-70% off. (It had candy corn and off-brand chocolates in the shape of werewolves, but looked more like werewolf droppings.) It was a very pleasant experience. I paid for my prescription and returned to the parking lot.

In may car, jamming to Diane Rehm, I reversed out of my tiny spot. Or rather, I tried to reverse. I went two inches and then I stopped. I moved two inches forward and then I stopped. I did not stop by choice. This was no choice of mine! This was the choice of the curved curb that somehow I had maneuvered around to get in, and then it closed around me like the toothy maw of Jaws. I reversed. Stopped. Pulled forward. Stopped. It was like I was trying to do some kind of bad box step in my station wagon.

And I realized “I am not getting out of here! I am stuck! The construction dudes are looking at me! What am I going to do? I am really really really stuck!”

So I did what any maladjusted person would. I panicked. Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfickfuck. That was pretty much my inner monologue. To COVER my panic, I decided to scroll through my phone. There. That’d fix it! I’d just sit there and scroll until…until I could call my husband and he could get me out. I only had to wait six hours.

Luckily, I only waited six minutes. Then the lady who was snuggled next to me got into her car and reversed, leaving me a huge open space to maneuver my giant car into and get the hell out of there.

These are the things that happen to me. Pretty much daily. Fucking CVS.