Duration: 17:21

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Relax and listen to some keyboard sounds. I'm typing the text below.

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There's a cashier at the grocery store near where I live that always asks me the most unfathomable question when I go up to her register.
"Did you find everything?"
Now I'm sure what she meant was "Did you find everything you needed?" but leaving it open ended like that messes with my brain. Did I find... EVERYTHING...
An immediate surge of imagery and information floods my mind... Everything...
Ketchup bottles, lemmings, avocados, chairs, buildings, bowler hats, ice cream, Tobacco sauce, dental hygiene, stamps, foot powder, kittens, the ocean, the Moon, pistachios, the new Dodge Caravan, koala bears, Boba Fett, paint brushes, did I find everything?
Nuclear reactors, the Hadron Collider, atoms, micro organisms, the sun, planets, galaxies, the speed of light, the concept of time, The Little Mermaid, did I find everything?
My family, my friends, people I've smiled at today, everyone who is lactose intolerant, film directors, janitors, rioters, police officers, girl scout cookies, Barack Obama, the people who picked the fruit I ate today, Oprah, did I find everything?
All this hits me while I try to fathom EVERYTHING and what I could possibly do to find it all. The question floors me. I'm sure she didn't intend to start my purchase transaction with an outlandish, existentially cosmic impossibility (especially judging by the irresponsibly nonchalant manner in which she asked), but it happened.
I especially didn't appreciate the lack of time she allowed me to contemplate an answer. From her point of view I probably looked touched in the head, white knuckled clutching my shopping cart, eyes wide open staring through her.
"Dear?"
"Oh yes, sorry." The immensity of ages past shake out of my immediate thoughts as I fumble through the rest of the encounter.
"So you found everything?"
"Yes, on some plane of existence, I found EVERYTHING."
And she looks at me like I'M the weirdo.

I went grocery shopping yesterday and part of my purchase was a scented candle and a lighter. The cashier holds the lighter in front of me and says "birthday?"
My immediate thought is that she's asking if the candles are for lighting birthday cake candles and if the birthday is mine. It's a weird question, but at least she hasn't put me in an existential bind. So I say "no, it's for the scented candle."
She then repeats (rather aggressively now) "no, birthday." So as calmly as I can muster, confused by this bizarre woman and her insistence that it's my birthday, I say "no... it's for this scented candle."
She then says (now with extreme petulance) "The register is asking for your date of birth."
Apparently you can't buy lighters if you're under 18.

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