The Miracle at Costco

I am easily awed and amazed, a point not so gently made By Mr. Dorfman, by the magnificence of simple things. For example let me regale you with an account of the events of yesterday which were, so far as I am concerned, a miracle of biblical proportions.
I have a greatly sliming number of bubble gum machines located in the Mission District. I fill them with candy and drain them of quarters every other month or so. At the request of one of the proprietors of a business where a machine is located, I was requested to stock the machine with nuts, which I willingly do. After all, I live but to serve. And, as you must already know, if one is to purchase nuts in bulk there is but one place to shop, that demi-god of suburbia (and urbia as well), Costco.

As any of you who have ever shopped at Costco must know it is neither for the faint of wallet, short of heart, or slight of time. Nonetheless, checking my watch as I arrived, I entered in that very latter state. I rushed to the nut section, hoisted up two five pound jugs of nuts and made my way to the queues. Fortunately for me they were short, it being just before five and all the worker bees not quite having left their hives. I jumped to a line which, while not the shortest, seemed to have an angelic spirit working the cashier position. Her speed and deftness were unrivaled in my experiences of the service industry. She hardly seemed to notice the humans, focusing only on scanning and processing of our bulk goods. At this time I had another uncanny bit of fortune. The couple in front of me, seemingly immigrants, from what nation was I cannot say though I suspect in may have been heaven, let me go before them. Near tears I handed my jugs of nuts to Beth the spirited machine of scanning.

Before I knew it my groceries were in a bag and I twenty dollars poorer. Shocked at the speed, I walked to the door and checked my watch. Not five minutes had passed! Not yet five! I can say with much confidence that I have never spent less than five minutes in a Costco, even when I have decided it was too crowded to shop and left without purchasing anything. Considering I usually bring a novel to read while waiting, the fact that I spent so little time shopping in Costco, much less a local grocery store, establishes the events at Costco on November 11th, 2005 as a miracle.