Chapter XCII: Safety in Numbers

Strawberry...
Banana...
Strawberry-banana...

Each box was color-coded by flavor, and they marched along in a syncopated rainbow across the shelf. Damn RiteAid, I seethed bitterly. Why do there have to be so many choices? I've always been horribly indecisive when it comes to choosing just one item out of an assortment of substantially similar things...

You can often find me standing in the middle of The Avenue with 85 cents clutched in my fist, staring blankly at the doughnut wall. During those moments, my mind is actually awhir with fruitless calculation and countercalculation, like when the CPU usage suddenly jumps to 99% for no discernible reason and my computer freezes. I'm thinking things like, the glazed donut has fewer calories than the jelly-filled, so I should buy it because its healthier. On the other hand, the jelly has a higher calorie/cent ratio, so doesn't that mean its a better deal? But then again... and so on, ad infinitum, or at least until someone takes the last glazed doughnut.

As embarassing as doughnut induced paralysis is though, it's not quite as humiliating as standing in front of the counter trying to decide which pack of condoms to buy while the pharmacist watches me with beady eyes.

Why couldn't I just choose? To make it worse, flavor was just one consideration out of a million others...

Trojan or Lifestyles
Nonlubricated or lubricated (spermicidal, "warm and tingly", both, neither)
Unribbed or Ribbed For Her Pleasure™ (ribbed, ultra-ribbed, or ultra-ultra-ribbed)
And the sizes...
And the colors...

In the end, I just snatched up an economy pack of 12 something-or-others. It rang up at the counter at around 20 bucks, which seemed a tad expensive. I wasn't about to raise a ruckus about it though, and figured I must have misread the box. When I got home and looked more carefully, I realized I had bought 36, not 12...

Great.

I wonder whether the cashier thought I was a total stud, or a complete whore.