REALITY OF THE CHECKOUT GIRL

     Beep. Beep. Ka Ching. [thank you.]
     And the cashiers try to think and talk over the drone they’re paid to create. It’s their only chance at keeping their souls. In everyone’s eyes you can see a tired dream. For some it sparkles and others it fades–but no one is without a story.
     There are the builders of the future–the idealists. The neurosurgeon. The secret service agent. The poet. The stockbroker. They are little people with big dreams–the ones who know there’s a better place and plan on finding it.
     They are a part of the /Just Untils.” And really everybody begins as a Just Until. Just Until I graduate. | Just Until the bills are paid. | Just Until I’m famous. | Just Until San Francisco. | Just Until next month. | Just Until there’s something better.
     And many really do leave. Some because they actually have found what they were looking for. They are The Victors. But most are only tired. And you can’t help but wonder if they’ve really landed no further than a few streets over: different cash register, same dead end.
     So the disillusioned get promotions–and they control the Just Untils. In their eyes you can see doors to success opening instantly closing time and time again. They are The Trapped. The Lifers. Those who smile and almost mean it until the customer leaves and they stop being managers. They become human again, for only a few moments, whining and pretending they are still what they dream of: a Just Until who hasn’t given up their right to a chance, a choice and a hope.
     And in all of their eyes you see weariness and a plea for a way OUT that the ever demanding consumer never notices. So the young talk about why they’re running register, where they are headed, how they are escaping and when. The older, whose stories no on really knows, discuss anything to forget the fact that they are no longer young. And the registers keep beeping and the lines only grow despite all of the leg cramps and never-moving clocks.
     [This is what happens to a dream deferred. It checks out groceries.]

- Cara Kulwicki