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anonymous girl #1: we need to get rid of one

item to get in the fifteen-items-or-less line.
anonymous girl #2: okay. how about the milk?
anonymous girl #1: the milk.
anonymous girl #2: the milk.
anonymous girl #1: the milk that we

drove all the way out here to get.

(pause)

anonymous girl #1: what about the pumpkin pie mix?

anonymous girl #2: absolutely not.

anonymous girl #1: you grabbed that completely at

random. we don't have a pie crust. or evaporated milk.
anonymous girl #2: trifles.
checkout woman: i'm closed.
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something wonderful is about to happen. [bumper sticker]

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i'm sitting in wilderness first aid. with a lot of guys who think they know everything there is to know about wilderness first aid. they're discussing the best way to pick up a rattlesnake with minimal damage to their extremeties. i'm praying that if i ever need emergency first aid they are all out of range of my cries.

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the trainer gestures to a picture of a human body, points out the face, the hands, the feet. does anyone know why we evacuate when there is any damage to these areas? he asks. all the boy's hands shoot up into the air. i don't want to think about what they're probably going to say. apparently the trainer feels the same way. he waves them all down.

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no, he says. these are indespensible. these are what make us human. our hands, our feet, our faces. his lifts his hands, his palms facing us. opposable thumbs. the prints on our fingertips. these above all else must be preserved.

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i rotate my thumbs under my desk, use them to touch the tip of every finger. this is what makes me human. i try not to think about people who lost their faces in fires or were born without feet.