Retarded

While Hurricane Rita was gearing up to become a category 4/5 storm, our slumlord warned us that we would probably need to evacuate because our house would blow away in such a storm. This was six days before Rita was slated to hit the Gulf Coast. I went to Target that Tuesday to prepare the evacuation kit. I didn't fare too well, because, well, I am Hurricane-retarded. I guess I'm a hurricane retard because I grew up with earthquakes, which, as far as natural disasters go, have the good manners NOT to announce their impending doom.

Retarded: for example, for twenty minutes, I stood in front of the shelf of unaffordable clock radios, looking for something affordable that would work on regular batteries. I was pissed that there were no regular "transistor"-type radios. What the hell happened to transistor radios? Are they obsolete or something? As I'm picking up one clock radio after another to check what type of battery each one uses, this woman walks up to the shelf and grabs this box that was sitting right there -- a portable transistor type radio. All along I thought that the picture on the box was a video camera, so I hadn't looked at it closely. PISSED! I watched the woman handle the box, turning it over and around to look at the features, and I know she could feel my foaming at the mouth for that radio. I wanted to say, "Um, excuse me but I was here before you were, and, like you, I am looking for a transistor-type radio. And, uh, I saw that box earlier, but I thought it was a video camera, so I didn't pick it up, but now that I see that it's a radio -- the exact kind I've been wanting the whole time, the only reason I even came to Target in the first place -- I think you should let me have it."

R-e-t-a-r-d-e-d.