How My ATM Card Would Have Made Dyson Proud

Tonight after work I stopped at the grocery store for a salad. The poor soul in line behind me got the scare of her life, I think.

I was getting ready to pay when my atm card flew out of my hands and landed on the floor at my feet. I bent over to pick it up and spent the next thirty seconds pushing the card around on the floor like a demented kitty cat playing with it's prey.

The damn thing was positioned perfectly so as not to allow any kind leverage on it. The kind of grip/leverage that would allow me to PICK IT UP AND USE IT instead of schooching it around in a circle. While I struggled with the card, my purse came loose from my shoulers, slid down my arm and knocked me right in the head.

That's when things got serious. I stood up, put my purse on the check out counter and rolled up my sleeves. I said a loud to the checker and the woman behind me. "Uh. I seem to have dropped my card. Hold on a second, I think I can get it..."

BRILLIANT! They were painfully aware of my situation. And now I was narrating my own embarrassment. Days don't get much more fun than that.

I tried everything. I tried the push down on it realy hard with one hand hoping it would stick thing. I tried using my shoe and one hand, then my shoe and two hands. Then both feet and both hands. All it would do was glide around on the floor.

I began talking to it: "YOU ARE NOT A RACE CAR! Stoppit with the vacuum suction!"

BRILLIANT! Now people HAD to be scared. Some how, a long time ago, I learned that race cars are built so that when they go fast, the vacuum created up under the car helps to keep them stuck to the road. Hell, this might not even be accurate but apparently my brain - if that is what I am to call it - decided that little bit of trivia was a perfect analogy.

FINALLY it came up off the floor. I don't even know how I finally got it loose from the floor, but OH MY GOSH was I grateful.

And then I started to laugh. I got those giggles you get when you aren't supposed to laugh. The ones that hit you in a meeting or anywhere else where it would be better to be as quiet as possible. And I made myself tear up I was laughing so hard and shaking my head at myself.

The woman behind me and the grocery store checker were stunned, or terrified. I'm not sure which. There was not even a smirk or a smile between them.