Look at the moosebutt on that one

J-girl and I were at Albertson's today getting a discount turkey. All we had to do was buy $25 of overpriced groceries and then we could buy a turkey at 38 cents per pound. You don't have to buy much at Albertson's to make it to $25. We got a little exuberant (they had diet vanilla coke on sale!) and ended up buying $55 dollars worth of groceries, which naturally led my wife to haggle for the right to buy a second turkey at the same discounted price. I looked at the three guys behind me in line and shrugged my shoulders. I was all too aware of my responsibility as a guy not to make any other guy spend a second longer than was necessary in a grocery store. In their eyes, the only right thing would be for me to assert my commitment to law, order, and minimal line wait times by telling the little lady to back off. I'm sure they would admit, however, that if they were in my shoes, they would feel just like me—much too cowardly to stand between the little lady and a discount turkey. Nonetheless, they still expected better of me, and I could feel the pressure and animosity. I stared at my shoes, inwardly reeling at the bitter waves of resentment being sent my way.

Finally J-girl and the cashier agreed that J-girl would be able to get a second discount if she broke the purchase into two transactions. Oh-oh, I thought. That was the worse case scenario. Those guys behind me were gonna have to wait for us to get a second turkey and then wait to have the cashier split up the groceries and ring up everything again so that it turned into two transactions that totaled more than $25 each. That's when I felt the really hostile vibes. I could tell they were silently cursing me and questioning my manhood. They were sure that I must be a eunuch to let the line get held up like this. I smiled weakly at the cashier as my wife went to pick out a second turkey. I would have gone to get it just so that I could be away from all the resentment. However, both J-girl and I are clearly aware that me being a guy means that I'm too gender-handicapped to be able to pick out a turkey. So off went J-girl, leaving just me, the cashier, and the three eunuch haters.

As the other guys were watching my wife leave and silently cursing all women and their pitiful, spineless husbands, the cashier asked me if I would be willing to donate to the Utah food bank. I grabbed onto her offer like the life line it was. This was my chance to demonstrate that I wasn't eunuch material. Using standard guy reasoning, I quickly deduced that a contribution to feeding the hungry would easily compensate for my line-stopping treason to guy-kind. Even if the guys behind me didn't see that I was stamping out hunger, the fact that I was actually making a purchase would force them or any other guy to admit that I had a had a right to still be standing in front of the register.

So I told her I would be glad to contribute, after which she grabbed one of the preprinted donation forms and scanned it. Sure enough, the guys noticed that something had been added to the total bill, and while they continued to shuffle their feet and sigh heavily, I felt the hate waves lessen. I smiled a little, at the same time hoping that J-girl would hurry so that the amount I had contributed would balance my register-hogging debt to society. If she wasn't quick enough, I admitted to myself, I would probably have to make another contribution just to keep things even.

I was still trying to reason through how much a wasted minute at the register cost in terms of dollars in food bank donations when the cashier handed me the donation form and asked me to put my name on it. Let me explain that all of these places that accept donations have the annoying habit of displaying the forms on the store walls, proudly showing the names of the contributors. This practice is the main reason I refuse at times to donate. All of my dealings with the public are guided by a single metaphor: the nail that sticks out gets hammered. OK, sure, it's probably overly pessimistic, and may in fact be largely untrue. But it works for me. I try to avoid being noticed for anything, good or bad. I am always happy to  blend into the background. But writing my name on some stupid form to be seen by lots of people I didn't know was not my idea of blending. I stood there at the register, uncapped black sharpie in my hand, wondering what to do. I was already inconveniencing the cashier, so I didn't want to make a scene. Instead, I quickly scribbled my online name—Moosebutt—onto the form and handed it back to the cashier.

J-girl still wasn't back, so the cashier had nothing better to do than read the name on the form. She glanced at it with bored eyes, started to put it down, and then looked again. She looked back up at me, catching the laugh that was on its way out, and turning it into a smirk on her now attentive face. I was about to explain why I chose to write that particular name, but before I could say anything, she shook her head, looked back down at the form, and chuckled. Then she looked back up at me, eyes snapping, her lips noticeably pinched tight to hold back the zinger that was on the tip of her tongue. I looked down at my feet, and we stood like that for nearly a minute until J-girl finally showed up with the second turkey. Then the cashier scanned the turkey, inserted a key into the cash register, and punched in the code to allow the purchase of the second turkey at the discount rate. The groceries didn't have to be split up, and nothing had to be rescanned. The guys behind me sighed in relief. As quickly as I could,  I swiped my credit card, gathered the bags, and grabbed the receipt, my eyes glued to the floor the entire time. As I turned toward the exit and the cashier wished us a good day, I swear I could feel her smirk as she considered whether my butt was more similar in size to an elk or a moose. This only served to convince me that my metaphor for governing public relations was spot on.