I think all my eggs are cracked...

Our supermarket recently had a facelift with a new parking lot surface, new glow-in-the-dark parking space lines and those yellow bands of buttons added at the crosswalks. I asked the young man who bagged my groceries and helped me out to the car--this help-to-the-car is something my supermarket does for everyone, men, women, children, old and young, feeble and robust--what those bands were for? He didn't know for sure. The bigger stores in town, Target, Wal-Mart and Sam's Club have them from one end of the store front to the other.

Walking into a store with these bands is not an issue. If you're wearing lightly-soled shoes, you might think you're getting an acupuncture treatment for your feet, or, if you are wearing spindly high heels, you may be quickly reviewing your accident insurance coverage for falling and breaking your neck, but other than that, these brightly colored bands of rubber paint and buttons are insignificant until you exit the store... Let's say you purchased eggs, or heavy cream, or some delicate glassware or other fragile items, you will be eating omelets, whipped cream and finding yourself spending a few evenings with your bottle of glue trying to put your glasses back together--this will teach you why Humpty Dumpty was not put back together again, and, if all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't do the task, then what hope do you have? Of course, the horses didn't have opposable thumbs or hoof dexterity and the king's men were probably wearing armor which would make putting anything delicate back together an impossible task. But that's another story or fairy tale. Back to the yellow strips of doom that are popping up everywhere these days.

I spent most of the trip home from the supermarket trying to figure out what purpose those strips played in life. Were they mandated by some government agency? Most probably yes, because who would choose to spend money putting those in front of their store to irritate all the shopper who exit? Unlike the buttons that are installed on highways and major roads at the edges and centers of the road for the purpose of waking a drowsy driver who is veering off the road or alerting a careless driver who is wandering out of his or her lane whilst changing CDs, drinking a beverage, sorting through mail, putting on make-up, or talking on a cell phone, most of the patrons exiting the stores aren't falling asleep at the helm of their carts and, other than having forgotten where they parked their cars (again!), they aren't in imminent danger of careering into a ditch or into oncoming traffic. And those buttony strips aren't there to prevent people from slipping down steep inclines because the strips are on flat ground, except at the handicapped crossing lane, where they have a gentle slope. And, if someone in a wheelchair needs to descend from or ascend to the entrance of the store, then, as Betty Davis said in one of her famous movie roles, "Buckle up. It's going to be a bumpy ride." I think that massage therapists everywhere should be protesting because the work-out you get traveling over those 3-4 foot strips not only gets the blood circulating, but it works every muscle in your arms, neck and back. But then I wondered if these strips were to prevent terrorists or robbers from driving up to the front of stores without shaking something in their pea-brains loose, causing them to re-think their lives of crime. Finally, I understood why those bands were governemnt-required installations. Someone in the government purchased trillions of metal buttons and a lot of yellow rubberized paint some years back and there has been a secret committee meeting for all these years, trying to find a way to use these wastrel materials. So, the next time you go shopping with the hopes that everything you purchase will remain unbroken or unbruised as you travel back to your car, buy only what you can carry, don't wear tipsy high-heeled shoes, or bring along enough friends, kids or other family members to help you carry out and carry on with all your purchases intact. Personally, I think all those yellow buttons look like evil little smiley faces and they are having the last laugh as we jostle and jolt across their surfaces...