Ten minutes to Eternity

My mom's house is in the boonies. To get there, I have to go through two or three small towns that are around...maybe 10,000, but it's hard to tell, as I just did a Google search and came up with nothing as to to the population of each. Cell phone service is available, but even my Verizon and my brother's AT&T services quit when we get to her house.

She lives outside/in a small town--well, come to think of it, I don't think there is a mayor of that town, it's sort of a general area--an "unincorporated community," with a population of around 6000, more or less, depending on if you count the town next to it that is under the same zip code, because the U.S. Postal Service generally doesn't acknowledge that town exists, unless the inhabitants insist, and I believe the town inhabitants have to pay a fee to have the town they live in as part of their home address. There was some bad history between that one town and the U.S. government, and once the government has it in for you, it seems it doesn't forgive or forget, even if you are long dead. I believe the town founders who supposedly defied and offended the federal government (they dared published booklets on agnosticism and practiced yoga on property they owned) have been dead about 100 years now. Yeah, that's 100 years, no typo.

Anyway, I traveled after work on Monday to stay with my mom, because she had cataract eye surgery scheduled on Tuesday. I decided to leave home well past rush hour, but well before dark, neither wanting to mess with traffic or a barely-lit two-lane rural highway. Knowing that my mom was not (I HOPE) going to leave her house for a few days after surgery, I asked her whether she wanted me to pick up anything on the way--a carton of milk, she said. There's a grocery store in one of the towns, about 15 minutes away from my mom's house, so I stopped in there, because she said it was open until 10. I got there before 9 pm--plenty of time.

I decided to pick up a few items for myself as well, and browsed the close-set, twilight-dimmed aisles crowded with as many daily necessities and little luxuries as a rural grocery store can afford to carry: the ubiquitous Starbucks bottled frappucino, yes; Pepsi Max, no. MD 20/20 cheek by jowl with Chateau Ste Michelle. Little toys from China wrapped in cellophane--cellophane--how old is that? The store has a latte stand just 200 feet across the parking lot from another latte stand, because after all this is Washington State, where intravenous drip coffee would be available if someone could find a way to do it legally.

No hurry, I thought (though I wished one of the latte stands were open--a little "why bother" decaf latte would not have been amiss). It was well before the closing time of 10 pm, and I was the only customer. I was startled to hear, as a result, the lone cashier announce, "store customers, please prepare to purchase your goods as the store will be closing in ten minutes to eternity."

Ten minutes to eternity.

Should I rush, or shouldn't I? How long was ten minutes to eternity? I looked at the quart of milk, my package of Kotex-with-wings, and my diet Coke with lime (diet Coke is my default, unless there is diet Pepsi Max with ginseng), wondering if somehow time was different in this little store, and if these items would somehow disintegrate in a strange, quantum space-time continuum sort of way if I hurried, or morph into some evolutionary blob not yet known to man or beast if I took my time.

I walked in a moderate way to the check-out stand.

"Ten minutes to eternity," I said as I placed my items on the conveyor belt.

"Yeah, I throw out stuff like that sometimes to see if anyone notices," the cashier said. He was a lean, dark-haired young man with a goatee, with a nonchalant air about him. Under 30, I thought, maybe 25. He punched in the prices on the cash register.

"So Twilight Zone." I gestured at the windows, grey with shadows and the barely visible setting sun. "Here I am, going down a lone country highway at dusk, an unsuspecting consumer of grocery goods looking only to buy a few things on the way to my elderly mother's house..."

"You only think you're coming in here to buy milk, sanitary supplies, and a cold refreshing diet beverage," he replied. "When you leave...will you really be leaving? Or will you be entering? Into what will you be entering? Is there a difference between entering and leaving?"

"Maybe not!" I said.

He paused thoughtfully before bagging my purchases. "I had an uncle who once said that. Are there really differences between---" He waved his hand at everything in general. "All this? Once, everything was the same. It was all one big sameness. No conflict, because who's going to be all judgemental when it's all the same? And then people started finding differences. This is different from that, all the way down to particles and scientific names for things we don't even see. Now, it's, this is better than that, I'm better than you, no, I'm better than you. This is good, this is bad."

"Makes me think of how Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, and then they began to think they way they were created was somehow bad."

He pointed at me and pulled his trigger finger. "Bullseye." He counted out my change, and closed the till, locking it. "You be safe out there. Whatever out there is."

I hummed the Twilight Zone song, and he grinned.