Somewhere out there, the dreaded sirens of “They” are “calling for” flurries. You can almost hear their sing-song “Flurries! Oh flurries! Where are you, flurries?”

The skies are somber, the clouds cheeky and contemptuous, the panic of the people palpable, predictable, preposterous and pronounced. In other P words Peter Piper picked the pepperoni off his pickled pepper pizza.

Inside the supermarket, people are fighting over toilet paper, milk and the last tubs of Cherry Garcia. Ineptly maneuvering their shopping carts, they form long, fidgety lines at checkout. How long? So long they could be seen from outer space if not for the shortsighted defunding of the space program and, of course, the roof overhead.

Trapped in one of these snaking lines, an off-duty blogger searches for something to divert his attention from the horror of a 15 minute wait. He can’t help noticing the door marked “Manager” opposite the checkout counters. (He has tried, really tried, but even after years of therapy, he still can’t help it.)

Taped to the door is a warning in boldface Tempus Fugit Non-Comebackibus, Sans Serif

“This door must remain locked at all times.”

Hardened by life’s barren braggadocio, Mr. Bloghair instantly bets himself one million dollars that the door is not locked right now. After all, this is the same store with a sign in its parking lot reserving space for “Expected Mothers.”

The warning suggests that this door has been left unlocked many times in the past. By…let’s see…the manager? The assistant manager? A mother complaining that some unexpected crab cake is parked in her spot?

The bloggist taps the shoulder of the old lady in front of him. Her cart contains 18 heads of iceberg lettuce and a bottle of Ken’s Ranch Dressing Lite.

“Why go to the trouble and expense of posting a sign on the door,” he asks her, “unless there’s something behind the door that the manager wants to keep secret?”

The old lady looks anxiously for her guardian angel. The blog dude adds “I’m betting that behind that door you’ll find either money, sex or a tanning bed. Maybe even a sex-for-frozen-edamame-beans conspiracy. Or a money-for-melanoma scheme.”

The drooling zombie behind him, his cart overflowing with tubes of Burt’s Bees skin cream, says “Yes, but why post a sign if the door is to be always locked, forever and ever, amen?”

“Point taken,” says the generous blogman. “If you try to open the door and you don’t have a key, you just move on to friendlier doors – hopefully, without boldface fonts.”

“And if you do have a key,” says the old lady, hefting a head of lettuce menacingly, “well, why do you have a key if the door is to remain locked at all times?”

Which means, they realize simultaneously, that the manager locked inside the office has fatally outsmarted himself.

A word to the unwise: When your frozen foods begin thawing near electrical appliances, someone is bound to end up frying. To wit: a naked, unexpectedly electrocuted store manager and somebody’s mother covered in melted edamame beans. Although, appropriately, with a tan to die for.

Note: some of the people in the preceding dramatization of a random strike by an insanity drone, were paid a promotional fee by the American Powder Room Institute. They urge all of us to stock up now on “powder” to avoid future shortages with their collateral damage.

In other words, a pickled Peter Piper predictably picked up a piccolo to probe the proboscis of a passing pachyderm who promptly parked his prodigious posterior on Peter and pressed him like a pancake. (Repeat 50 times without stopping and then go about your business.)

©Patrick A. McGuire and A Hint of Light 2013-2016, all rights reserved.