39 years of schooling between the two of us, and not much to show for it ...

So Saturday night Dr. J and I were at the grocery store - that's right, I said Saturday night. No, I swear we're still fun even though all we do is work or watch 24 re-runs and go to the grocery store on Saturday night.

Anyhoo ... so we are checking out at the self checkout line at the grocery store. You know, the one where you scan and bag yourself. Very convenient, if I say so myself. Never been much of a lets-become-best-friends-with-the-checker-at-the-grocery-store and yet I always still feel guilty for just standing there and not saying anything. So we're there, at the You-Scan that's furthest from where the Self-Scan-Superintendent is, and there is pretty much no one else at the grocery store, except us and her, because, like I said before, it's Saturday night.

So we are scanning our food and we come to an de-barcoded bag of green onions. So I, routinely, push the button that says No Bar Code and wait for the pretty pictures of all of the popular produce to appear. But none does. And after about 20 seconds of no pictures appearing, all of the sudden, the Self-Scan-Machine says, "green onions ... $0.70". Dr. J and I just turn to each other and are like, wow ... how did it know it was green onions. So I'm all ... hey! grab the green beans! let's see if it can tell that it's green beans! And Dr. J enthusiastically puts the green beans on the scanner and hits the No Bar Code button. And wallah! It says, "Green beans ... $0.whatever!" We both roar back with hands flailing and shout WoW! Dr. J is, as any good professor should be, examining as to whether the machine could be deciphering the density of the vegetables as I run to get the tomatoes.

And then. Dr. J looks over to see that devilish little Self-Scan-Supervisor standing a mere 15 from our checkout station. And it became, embarrassingly, all too clear.