These are the people in your neighborhood

There is a little grocery store down the road from our house, right next to Kira's school.  It's owned by a couple, and the wife half of the couple is so nice and so pretty and smart etc. etc. that I've always liked her/admired her/ been intimidated by her.  But I mostly like her and for some reason it's important to me that she doesn't think of me as an idiot.  I've always tried to be on my best behavior in all my dealings with her because I think of her as such a quality person, but today I ruined 12 years of the "I'm not a freak" foundation I've been building with her.

I stopped by after work to get some bread.  No, let's go back a step:  This afternoon I worked teaching a fifth grade class, and if you have been reading the blog long enough, you know that I have shy bowels and the more I work, the less I poop, and when that happens, let's just say that nobody wins.  So I've been working all this week, and it's Thursday afternoon.  See where I'm going with this?  I have a lot of gas, which I didn't expel around people at school on purpose because I'm classy like that, even though I've gotten step by step instructions on how to get away with public farting with nobody being the wiser.  As soon as I got in the car I let it all go in an impressive (if I do say so myself!) show of flatulence.  Oh my god, did I feel better!  Then as I was driving along the road I saw the little store and I thought, "Hey!  I need bread!" so I stopped.

I went in the store, got the bread, and then noticed that they had 12 packs of diet coke on sale so I picked up four.  I went to pay and the pretty owner-lady was running the cash register and she insisted that I be helped outside with my hoard of coke and bread, which is fine because I thought she'd just call one of her teenage stock people, but no, she insisted on helping me herself, which I thought was nice because hey, maybe she likes me!  Tee hee!  I thought that all my diligent efforts towards normalcy around her has finally paid off and maybe we could someday be friends!  But then when I opened my car door for us to put my coke in, we were enveloped by my stench which had somehow concentrated and smelled like a dead ferret in a vat of sun-warmed, week-old, boiled eggs.  I was immediately totally humiliated and thought to myself, "She can't smell it!  We're outside!  The wind is blowing!" but then I saw her stop breathing out of her nose and start breathing out of her mouth and I wanted to die.  DIE, I tell you!  What do you say in that situation:  "I didn't know pop was on sale or else I would have held it in a little longer?" or  "I really have to poop?"  or "WHAT!?"  None of those seemed appropriate so I just didn't say anything at all.

Why did it have to be the grocery woman that I for some reason have a lady-crush on?  Why couldn't it have been that awful woman who works at the pharmacy who punches the touch screen with her fingernails?  Or anyone at Sam's Club?  Why do I constantly have to humiliate myself in front of people I want to impress?  This is why I don't have friends.