It's 46 degrees today, raining, I'm recovering from the flu and found absolutely nothing at all left on the boat to eat.
So this morning I hiked across the street to Safeway with my list, zipped right through my shopping, and came around the corner just in time to spot a cashier ringing up her customer's last two or three items ... and no one else waiting in line behind him.
I moved in quickly and had unloaded my groceries in about 6 six seconds ... and should've immediately realized things were going way too smoothly. Because at that point the man frowned at his receipt, realized his coupons applied to none of the items he'd selected, and told the cashier No Thanks, just void my entire order. Then he walked off.
But I didn't get angry or impatient, even after it took the cashier almost seven minutes to find a manager to void out the order.
I finally left Safeway a moonphase or two later (after overhearing Job ask for a supervisor's home phone number) with my knuckles dragging the pavement (canned goods are heavy) and still had one more stop along the way: a ball-valve I'd ordered had arrived on the truck at West Marine.
How long can picking up one little item like a ball-valve take? Well, it depends.
(a 1/2" Full-Flow In-Line Ball Valve, above)
In fact, How Long Can It Take? depends on two things: (a) how heavy your groceries are, and (b) how quickly the sales guide can explain to a non-English speaking customer how to use a diving mask with an attached snorkle, neither of which the customer's ever seen or handled before in his life.
I'm not sure, but the amount of time involved is probably measured in terms of paleontological eons, or radioactive half-lifes.
By the time I'd added the valve to my load I was much looking forward to transferring my bags to a dock cart, and using it to wheel them the rest of the half-mile distance separating me from my boat.
Naturally, for the first time in 8 months, there wasn't a dock cart to be found anywhere within the 500-slip marina. Not one. Not anywhere. What's wrong with people who don't follow the rules and return dock carts to the ramp? I was almost starting to get impatient.
Let's just say the combined weight of heavy plastic bags carried in the palm is bad for the circulation, and caused my fingers to turn grape-purple and stiff by the time I'd lugged my load down the last stretch of dock to my boat.
But guess what? My thumb still worked fine ... and instead of getting angry, impatient or saying bad words, my thumb's what the devil got. Instead of giving in to anger, I had to laugh at how impossibly hard it can be sometimes to get simple things done. And stick my thumb right in the devil's eye.
Maybe Lucifer gets impatient when his schemes fail and the only reward he gets for his trouble is being laughed at. And a thumb in his eye. Maybe Satan gets real angry or red-faced at that point and starts cussing as he storms off to find somebody else to pick on and tempt. What matters is that he goes away.
There's no scriptural support for saying this, but it's just my feeling that the enemy enjoys laughing at us when we believe him, and never with us when he's beaten.
