On the Fritz

Last night I went to Fred Meyer to purchase some groceries for the next few weeks. As I entered the store I set off the sensor alarms at the door. This shouldn’t be much of a surprise to some of you as I have been setting off store alarms for a few months now. At one point I thought it was my purse – so I switched purses. Then I thought it might be the electronic clicker for my car – so I took it off my keychain and stopped using it. That did help, but I still set them off about 50% of the time. My last resort was to start turning off my phone when I walked through the detector. This has helped but I’d say I set alarms off about 25% of the time now. Pretty much always at Fred Meyer and Office Max.

Basically, it’s an embarasement to be me.

Friends will not walk into a store with me. They demand that I let them enter before or after me in order to avoid the awkward stares that I receive. It’s gotten to a point that I don’t even stop anymore. If someone wants to question me go ahead, I have nothing to hide, but I’m tired of feeling bad everytime I set off an alarm. I just say a little prayer and walk through the sensors – hoping that they wont go off. I’m still a little convinced that it’s my phone setting them off. It’s old and needs to be replaced but I’m waiting to get a new one until I’m back from Europe.

I decided today that it’s probably a good thing for me to get used to people staring at me awkwardly. That’s probably going to be my life for the next year as I travel in places where I will stick out from the crowd. Life is funny that way – Lemons to Lemonade I guess.