For another thing, there is the 2 second delay. It’s bizarre. You ask someone a direct question and you get a two second delay. It’s as if no one is home. At first, I just assumed that everyone was high. I mean, like REALLY high, ALL the time. Like maybe it’s somehow been slipped into the water supply. But even then you would get an occasional flash of something that resembles… I dunno, LIFE, or rational thinking, or something. Which is where the pod people idea came in. Now I think what is happening during those two seconds where the lights are on but no one is home, is that they are trying to approximate natural human interaction. Also, they are trying to lure us into giving up all hope and taking a nap.
Take today for example, when I had to call around to a million Longs Drugs, to find this $20 blue latex bag to swaddle Her Royal Highness in, so that she can go swimming with her cast on. As a side note, I have decided that I officially hate Longs Drugs and everything they represent. Their website is the suck. The driving directions that they so helpfully include, are wrong. And the items they list as available, are not available. However, they seem to be the only place that sells the overpriced garbage bags I require, and so to Longs it is. Alas, there are no Longs Drugs within the city limits of my beloved
But that means that I needed to call around to find the closest one with one of these casty thingies. The first Longs I tried was in Marin City, which, for the record, is also populated with waspy weird white Pod People. I call, and then have three different people pick up the phone, and then tell me to hold on, they will go look in the aisles to see if they have the ACTIVE SEAL CAST PROTECTOR THINGIE blah blah blah, each never to return again (I am going to guess that they got distracted by pretty lights along the way). Finally the fourth woman to randomly pick up the phone tells me,
“hello, what?….. oh…. No, I don’t think we have anything like that here….goodbye."
Finally, FINALLY, I get around to the Mill Valley Longs. They eventually tell me, yes, they have one in stock. Yeay. Longs Drugs online tells me that the store if a simple 15 minutes drive from my home. Yeay again.
They are so lying to me. Round and round and round I go, till finally, I pull out my iphone and map where the hell I am, and how to get to the Mill Vally Longs. Along the way, I pass the Milly Valley Middle school, notable mostly for a big shiny exclamation point statue in the front of the school.
Right there with you, exclamation point. Whoever put that statue there, probably originally just wanted to go to the store for a pack of mints or something, and never escaped.
Three million years later, we finally find the Mill Valley Longs. I look up and down the aisles, but can only find ridiculous looking water proof cast baggies for grown ups. I go to the pharmacy and ask the nice woman there… wait patiently for the 2 second delay, and speak slowly using simple words.
She smiles nicely, and leads me right back to the adult sizes.
Her Royal Highness, who up to the point has been incredibly patient (because I bribed compliance in this whole fiasco by promising her that a chocolate milkshake might be involved) is hobbling along behind me with her crutches.
“no, no, I need CHILD sizes,” I explain. Pod woman smiles nicely, then stares back down at the adult sizes again for another 2 second delay. She turns to me slowly, confused.
“I’m sorry, “ she says, “but…..” she wanders off and then comes back, “I don’t know….”
I thank her for her help and pod woman wanders off. Meanwhile, Her Royal Highness leans down and pulls out a tiny cardboard square from the bottom shelf.
“Is this it mom?" She asks me. And indeed it is. Two sheets of blue latex, sealed together, with a small hole at the top of one edge where a leg can be inserted. That’s it. $20.
And yet I am tempted to buy a second one, just because I fear having to repeat this process.
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