CURBSIDE ETIQUETTE

Through the Eyes of a Delivery Goddess



Below you will find links to dates when new entries are added. The stories will not necessarily be in chronological order, but rather as I remember them. I am dating them so that you can skip to new ones you haven't read since the last time you visited, and so that you are more easily able to find something you found humorous to share with others.
Space Invaders


Maybe it's that I was raised by parents with an acute sense of people around one's self, and I was a good student. Maybe it's just that I'm an only child and can't stand people touching my stuff, (call it borderline selfish if you'd like). But it seems, that the older I get, the less courteous people around me are becoming. More people cross the center line on the road coming toward me than ever before. My mom calls it "taking their half out of the middle." I suppose it has something to do with cell phone use; I, of course, am perfect and never send a text message while driving (?).

I don't think I've ever met anyone who ENJOYS talking to someone who feels the need to stand less than a comfortable twenty inches away from our own face. Someone years ago coined it "personal space".

I've always worked hard to maintain a safe, unoffensive distance between myself and other people. While in the check-out line at the local grocery store one day, the woman behind me not only invaded my personal space, but she darn near took it hostage. I entered a line with the conveyer belt and clerk on my left. I stepped in front of my cart to comfortably unload my stuff. I unloaded everything onto the belt and pushed the cart to the end of the checkout where a young lady began to bag my items. When I stepped in front of my cart to put things on the belt, the woman behind me did the same, but she started pushing on my cart with her back while she began to unload her cart. I must've had a snarl on my face; I saw the clerk glance at me out of the corner of my eye. She placed one of those "separator bars" between items belonging to the woman behind me & mine. The woman behind me crowded her items right up to the bar. I managed to squeeze past my cart to roll it in front of me so the shy young fellow bagging could fill my cart back up with items already scanned and bagged. If you can imagine, I'm right-handed, so to use the credit card machine and sign my name, I was standing face to face with the clerk, and the pin-pad was to my right. The woman behind me was leaning on me to push me through the line. I was trying to exchange a coupon with the clerk while the bulldozer behind me pushed forwarad. Finally, when it came time for me to sign my name, I'd been pushed so far, that I had to use my left hand to sign the pin-pad, and even at that, the ram bumped me while I was trying to write... left-handed. I guarantee you, someone like that is the first to step nose- to - nose and toes - to - toes if you've crowded their personal space!

And while we're on the subject of Space Invaders, I spoke to my parents over the weekend. Apparently one of their neighbors heard a ruckus on his front porch after dark night last week. When Mr. A. got up to peer out the window to see who was on his porch at that late hour, he was watching a black bear trying to find a way into the house. After some quick thinking, he made a couple of loud noises to scare the big lug, but the bear merely made a slow pieroette and mosied down the ramp, then blended into the darkness. Mr. A. returned to his TV show... "already in progress." About fifteen or twenty minutes later, Mr. A. heard some thumping around on the back porch. Suspicous, he snuck up to the back door, only to be looking face to face with the same black bear. I forget now, exactly what my dad said Mr. A did to get rid of the bear this time, but he seemed to move on after that. Mr. and Mrs. A. speculated that the bear could smell the chicken soup in the crock pot, cooking on the counter top right underneath the window, and HE WAS DETERMINED TO HAVE SOME. That could have been a very scarey game of Space Invaders!!