Slipstream.
Before work I stopped at the store to get some much needed ingredients to survive all the bullshit, mostly things filled to the brim with sugar or promising me “energy,” and the store was almost empty. Very few customers, stockers and empty boxes littering the aisles, and the checkout clerks were so bored by the lack of business that they didn’t really want to linger at the checkout stands amidst the gossip magazines and plethora of fruity, sugar free gums. In short, it was nice.
There were a few other customers wandering aimless like myself. I happened to pass one such woman on the liquor aisle. Her eyes darted from cheap bottle of wine to cheap bottle of wine, not really focusing on anything, since she was talking on her cell phone.
All I could hear as I approached her initially was, “Uh huh, got it,” followed by, “Uh huh, got it,” and then again, “Uh huh, got it.”
A normal enough conversation, but then, right as I’m passing her, I hear her say into the phone, “Wait, what?! She said what to you? Oh no. No! You tell her this for me, you tell her, you say… GET IN MAH WORMHOLE!”
The last part didn’t come out of her mouth until I had just passed her, the words hitting the back of my head and my ears and causing a chain reaction of surprised hysterical laughter within me so hard that I dropped whatever few groceries I was carrying. The desire to laugh lingered all day, right up until now as I replay it in my mind while typing this.
