Oh no...

Just another day.  Running errands, stopping around town, dropping things off, picking them up.  Last stop is the grocery store.  Strolling through the aisles, discovering products you never even thought about wanting (Omega 3,6,9 oil from avocado pits--no fish oil!), you slowly fill your basket with the necessary items (smoked gouda, mini ice cream sandwiches, and eggs) and a few unnecessary ones (the banana-paper notebook with owls on the front, and a cheap movie).  Eventually you have made your way through the entire store, collected every needful thing, and it is time to pay for you merchandise.


Life seems to be favoring you today.  As you approach the registers you see a total of four cashiers standing idly, waiting for something to do.  Steering toward the friendliest looking of the four, you begin to unload your cart onto the black rubber belt.  You make friendly chit-chat with your chosen cashier (who is wearing a name tag that reads "The Beard"), joking about the wide variety you have collected.  You are content.  

At last The Beard announces your total.  You reach into your purse and pull out the thing that also holds your most commonly used cards (library, driver's license, bank, Cafe Rio) and look in the designated pocket.  All you see is an Albertson's Club Card.  


Somehow, in the exact instant that you see that blue and white insignia, your heart stops dead.  A cold dread floods through your entire body.  Attempting to stifle panic before it is warranted, you hastily glance at all the other pockets where perhaps a misguided shove had placed the card by mistake.  Nothing.  Horror is rising steadily within you, overwhelming all barriers like the floodwaters of New Orleans.  Frantically you begin to ransack every pocket, fold, and crevice on your person.  Patting yourself down like some sort of schizophrenic policeman, you realize that it simply is not there.


The Beard waits patiently, having witnessed this ritual dance before.  Finally, you look up into his eyes, your own wide and deranged.  Calmly, he asks "Can't you find your card?  Would you like me to suspend your transaction while you go and check in your car?"  How can he be calm at a time like this?  Doesn't he understand that somewhere someone is--at this very moment--buying a vespa, an x-box, a refrigerator, a bounce house and dance shoes with that card?  Doesn't he understand that your carefully cultivated credit score, nurtured lovingly like a child, is being raped and pillaged by some unscrupulous miscreant who managed to stumble upon your card--forgotten and left behind on one of your many stops this day?  How dare he act so calm?!


To varying degrees this is a scenario we have all experienced.  Perhaps you go out to your car and find the card laying innocently on your passenger seat.  Perhaps you find it hiding between the pages of your planner.  Or perhaps you simply go home, cancel it, and order a new one.  Regardless of the outcome, those few minutes standing there dumbly at the cash register take years off a person's life.  What if it wasn't a once in a while occurrence?  What if that was how you were to spend the rest of your life?  The rest of forever?  What if you were condemned to spend eternity repeating those brief moments at the cash register when you realize that your life might be in the hands of someone else?


Welcome to the second circle of Hell...