METICULOUS STUDIES

Cause and Effect at Costco

Because what is causality anyway?

Today I learned something so huge at Costco, it was in bulk. I’d been browsing, enjoying the newly stocked sights, waiting patiently to move my 18-wheeler shopping cart ten feet down the aisle with my darling smile.

Then I got stuck.

I was next to a cart with a toddler in the top seat. She was shopping with her mother who was looking at enormous stuffed animal heads the size of elephant bladders. The toddler had nothing in the entire world to do except play with the seatbelt next to her.

Neither did I, so I watched.

She picked up the seatbelt, studied it, turned it in her hand, then smacked it onto the seat next to her like revenge. She picked it up again, stared at it, and flung it against the cart handle like hysteria. Then she picked it up and studied it like a mystery. It went like this, and I knew what she was doing. She was studying cause and effect, the meticulous examination of the progression of the world, and it was fascinating to her.

I wanted to be fascinated

As the aisle traffic abated, I took my bulky cart and continued, glancing back at the toddler now in rapture over her mother’s cell phone. Alas, soon I was stuck again in the snarl of gargantuan carts. Antsiness flooded me but then I remembered the meticulous-fascination-examination.

I picked up the only item in my stockpile wagon — Hot Chocolate Bombs. There were ten balls in the box, each wrapped in colorful holiday tinfoil. I yanked one out and turned it around in my hand. I sniffed it. Yum. I dropped it onto the cart seat and heard the kerplunk. Music.

Then I lobbed it at the fake Christmas tree to my right covered in polyethylene snow. It embedded into the branches and, just like that, I’d trimmed a tree. The fellow in a sweatshirt, sizing the tree up for purchase, lost his footing.

His sweatshirt said — Philadelphia Eagles

His face said — Chocobomb?! From the sky?!

I was enthralled with his puzzled expression, so I lobbed four more — red, silver, gold, green. The tree looked so tasty.

I discovered that if you throw a chocolate orb at a plastic tree it will sink into its branches and an Eagles fan will pluck it out, look twice around, peel open the wrapper, and devour it.

Cause and effect.

I felt like a physicist, or a philosopher, or an adult who is pathologically bored in frenzied holiday shopper traffic. I would now pay $15 for five Hot Chocolate Bombs instead of ten — an ontological riddle. Why had my money become more real while the chocolate less so? I moved on.

Further study

Down the side aisles I went, flinging canned sardines, walnuts, and the oat square thingies I shouldn’t be eating anyway into the cavernous belly of my cart. I was making good progress. I just had to get over to the cheese section for my husband’s one request.

Then — dammit — I got stuck again.

I stood there. I popped open the snack bag and bit into an oat square. Delish. I noticed the sweetness. I noticed my love for it. I knew I should further my studies.

I ripped open the bag of walnuts, grabbed a handful, and flung them onto the floor of the warehouse. They sprayed far, covering the center aisle in snackable opportunity. What I wanted to know was how quickly people would flock. Walnuts are very delicious and Costco shoppers are very ambitious.

What happened next was intriguing. Like the bloom of a chrysanthemum firework display, eaters propelled themselves up into a soaring arc, flying through the retail air, smack-landing on the concrete to slurp up the free food samples by mouth. It was beautiful. A food sample sprouting a flower of shopper hunger.

And — you guessed it — the aisles were free from competition, so I high-tailed it.

Important questions

As you would have predicted — the savvy theorist you are — folks were now running after me with their carts. I was the famed Choco-Walnut Lady. Costco shoppers were clearly interested in my cause and effect, for they too wanted to learn about physics. My son was a Physics major and I know Einstein had wispy hair. Yet, there’s still much to learn.

I was attracting the very crowds I yearned to escape.

As I approached the mobbed check-out lines, I questioned whether I needed any of the stuff in my cart. Hadn’t I done fine without it thus far? It was hard to answer that. I stood in my boredom, contemplating this question of necessity. There was only one way to find out.

I slipped a sardine can out of its box. I pulled off the foil lid. Fishy olive oil dripped everywhere. Soon the smell of sardines was wafting, and folks were gagging. Did I need this scenario or this fish? It sure was amusing, if greasy. I put the can to my lips and slurped in a fish slice. The fellow nearby dry-heaved. A woman in front of me vomited.

Yes, I needed the sardines for their omega-3 and repellant benefits, so I kept eating out of necessity.

I ripped the cheese bag open. Stinky cheese. The pungency filled the air. More of my neighbors began to crack and groan. I don’t even eat cheese. Why was I standing in the mob line for the next several hours to pay for it?

My husband said he needed cheese. We need air. Cheese is a stretch.

That left me with the oat snacks. I popped a couple into my mouth. Did they taste as delicious as I first thought? Yes. What a horrible bit of data to find in my data set. This meant I needed them, and I’d be in this line until New Year’s. Besides, I still needed to fork over fifteen bucks for five choco-orbs.

I’d wait.

Then I did like a smart woman. I climbed into the cart seat, strapped the seatbelt on, and asked the guy who’d gagged to push me while I finished the sardines. As we inched forward, the wheels of the cart ground occasional walnuts into nutmeal on the warehouse floor. My fishy stink caused my driver to throw up, for which I apologized profusely.

All of it, cause and effect.

Thanks to Amy Sea’s meticulous attention, this story will be featured in Costco’s magazine. I wish that were true.

There is a causal relationship between joining Medium and never having traffic in your life ever again.