Serenity?

Serenity:  The state of being calm, peaceful, and untroubled.

So here's what serenity looks like after 38 years of sobriety . . . 

I bought a bag of grapefruit from my local grocery store recently. A bag of rotten grapefruit, I'll point out - every single one of them full of an evil blackness when I broke the skin.  I'm pretty understanding with fresh fruit and vegetables.  Fruit's a gamble.  I acknowledge this.  If I get something crappy I figure it goes with the territory and I keep my mouth shut.  But a whole bag, I thought, qualified for a refund.  I even took a picture of some of the diseased grakpefruit to bolster my case if this was needed.

I forgot to bring along the receipt the first time I returned to the store.

The second time I had the receipt but I forgot to bring it to the attention of the service desk.

But the third time - the third time! - I had the receipt and I took it to the service desk where I was told I needed to pursue my complaint with the clerk in the checkout line.  I looked back at the long line and figured I'd take this up in the future.

I forgot to bring it up in the future.

But then - then! - I pulled the receipt out and showed it to the clerk, explaining the situation and asking for some kind of restitution.  I thought this was reasonable.

"You bought this at the start of the year?" she asked, peering at the receipt.

I shrugged noncommittally.  "Whatever date is on the receipt."  In no world did I imagine that the date I bought a bag of diseased fruit was the problem.  I anticipated the problem being the diseased bag of fruit itself.

"Yeah, the first of the year," she said, marking the receipt and clicking on the keypad and generally fucking around with the receipt and the keypad, to what purpose I did not know.  

I'm starting to get a little annoyed.  Not ruin my day annoyed but either give me a refund or tell me you're not going to give me a refund annoyed.

"Look," I said.  "If I waited too long so be it."  There were people in line and I was getting slightly more annoyed.  Not super annoyed, but more annoyed.

In The World According to Seaweed - a dark and illogical world, I grant you - the woman would have given me a refund - maybe suggesting to smooth things along that if something like this happened again I bring the matter to the store's attention in a more timely fashion - or tell me that this return had exceeded the stores Statute of Limitations.  I was fine with either eventuality.  This wasn't Fort Knox money - this was Overpriced Specialty Coffee money, which I dish out regularly without a whiff of irritation.

Still . . . serenity?