Which shell has the pea?

Yesterday I drove in to the "City" alone, for long postponed and urgent shopping.  I had a very human experience which I enjoyed enormously, and which is relevant to current threads here, to be expanded upon in the next post.

Basically, the "misdirection" magicians use to fool us into thinking that the pigeons have actually materialized in their hand, is a booby trap waiting for all us humans, all the time, every day.  You know the pea is under that shell... but having been distracted for a microsecond- your brain loses track.

I was buying a stick of 1" white schedule 40 pvc water pipe.  It's 10 feet long, of course- and totally impossible to not see.  Being an awkward object, after presenting it to the checkout girl (cute!) for her to scan, I carefully placed it, upright, leaning against the counter's display of impulse items (candy, nail clippers) , and firmly told her to NOT let me forget to take it with me, after we finished scanning all the other little objects (connectors, o-rings, geared lopping shears and 14' pole pruner to replace those stolen last fall with the truck, etc.)  

Humor, you know.  Don't let me forget this elephant, here.  She cheerfully joined in the game, ha ha.   So we turned our attention to the small stuff, and the credit card ritual.  Finished it all up, I collected the pole pruners, lopping shears - awkward enough to handle- then we both laughed, and reminded each other not to forget the 10 foot stick of pipe.  Which had, indeed, faded into the mental background in the meantime.  Ha!  Almost forgot it!  We humans are so silly.

I enjoyed it, she enjoyed it, the bagger and the adjacent cashier enjoyed it.  I struggled through the exit with this very awkward load- and set off the un-cleared merchandise alarm.  Somehow.  

Hm.  maybe it's the pole-pruner?  Back and clear (maybe) - nope, still setting off the alarm.  Glitch.

The very bright and competent check-out girl decides it's just something about the huge mass of metal I'm wrangling, and pushes me through the detector, and resets it; indeed, I'm manifestly not concealing stolen merchandise.

Cheerful waves goodbye, wishes for a good evening, and we all move on to the next chore in our worlds; for me, the fun of figuring out how to get a 10' piece of pipe and a pole pruner into in my vehicle, along with the other stuff already there...

Having managed to overcome the perversity of the inanimate, and get the pipe actually inside - cattywampus- I'm closing the hatch, to look up and be greeted by cries of "Sir!! Sir!!" - from a train of 4 people pursuing me rapidly across the parking lot...

"You forgot the bag!!"  - the little bag, of tiny parts.  Which I- we- had indeed totally spaced.

Since we were concentrating on the joke of "don't forget the enormous obvious pipe", and the tiny bit of flirting going on between the cute young shopgirl and the harmless old guy with the white beard.

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The moral of the story is; now that you've finally seen the elephant in the room- that doesn't mean all the cats, dogs, tables, chairs, sofas, children, books, toys... and whatnot that you knew were in the room beforehand - have disappeared. 

They're still there, and can be tripped on, if you forget it.

:-)