The rain was a daylong drizzle that by 3PM on a recent Monday had lessened not a bit. I was walking out of one of those big box, ‘we sell everything stores’, deep in the heart of Oakland County Michigan. I remember thinking that the computerized robotic scanners would soon put the check out clerks on the unemployment line; there to join the bank tellers, postal workers, journalists and others whose jobs have been usurped by the gizmos of technology.
Exiting the building I noticed two Oakland County cop cars pulled right up to the entrance parked nose-to-nose forming a V. My mind jumped off the robots and on to alert; something was going down in the store.
As I walked to my car, parked at the far end of the vast lot, I saw two brown-suited cops running fast across the expanse, dodging cars and shoppers like fullbacks sprinting for the goal line. ‘They’re chasing somebody’, my startled brain informed as my eyes began to search the area.
I spotted no one, and as I reached for my keys I received a shock I hadn’t experienced in a while, but its jolt was all too familiar. It was me they were chasing; me to whom they shouted, “hey you, stop right there!”
I did, turning warily to face the one who arrived first. He was panting from the effort, sweating in his bulky outfit. His face was mottled, his thin gray hair plastered to his scalp. With narrowed beady eyes he demanded, “what’s in the bag”, indicating with a jerk of his head the parcel I held. “ Why” I replied, wondering why they had targeted me.
(To be continued on 9-28-11)
'We sell everything stores'?
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