By Jon Dawson

It had been a long day for Jonathan Massey, 32, of Hookerton.

A report he’d been working on for a week was deleted by his computer during its 37th update of the week. His dog chewed up all of his Slim Whitman albums, and he found out the entertainment at this year’s office business retreat is Russell Brand. Devastated, all Massey wanted to do was drown his sorrows in a bowl of butter pecan ice cream. 

“Upon entering the grocery store I realized the store has been rearranged,” Massey said during an appearance on the Bryan Hanks Radio Show last week. “What was once the frozen food section is now the pet cosmetics aisle. Where my beloved butter pecan ice cream once sat is now populated with Grecian Formula Just For Dogs fur dye and Kitty Cat Prozac”.

Massey then called in his Eagle Scout nephew who used a Sportneer Military Lensatic Sighting Compass to locate the new coordinates for the ice cream section. It was a complicated route that required setting up camp overnight in the soft drink aisle, but as the first rays of dawn cascaded over the Kyle Busch toilet paper display, Massey and his nephew made their way to the calming hum of the grocery store refrigeration unit.

In a fashion similar to that of Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay when they first reached the top of Mt. Everest, Massey victoriously claimed the ice cream in the name of Greene County. 

“I then made my way to the checkout line, which to my dismay was 12 people deep,” Massey told Hanks. “Why? Because the person at the front of the line was talking on their phone.”

By the time Massey made it to the cashier his ice cream had melted.

“I can’t afford a shrink so that Breyer’s was the only thing keeping me from painting my face green and reciting Marlon Brando’s speeches from Apocolypse Now in the middle of a Walmart.”

As it turns out, N.C. Representative for the 12th District Chris Humphrey was listening to the Bryan Hanks Show the morning of Massey’s appearance. 

“After hearing Jonathan Massey’s harrowing account of his checkout experience I decided I had to do something,” Humphrey told the Bucklesberry Gazette. “Later this week I’ll be introducing legislation to make talking on your phone while in a checkout line a misdemeanor. Furthermore, anyone using the speakerphone option while in the checkout line would face felony charges.”

Opposition to Humphrey’s proposed bill has been hard to find. 

“Usually people want to start a fight in the legislature if they switch the brand of paper towels in the restroom,” said a longtime legislative staffer. “People on both sides of the aisle have promised to support Humphrey’s proposal.”

If Humphrey’s bill becomes law, others believe there is more work to be done.

“My blood pressure soars when the person operating the cash register is talking on their phone while I’m trying to pay,” said Paulette Burroughs, a political pundit based in La Grange. “Just the other day it took me four minutes to pay for a bottle of Early Times because the clerk was having an argument with his girlfriend over the phone. These people should all have to crop tobacco for a summer.”

Jon Dawson’s books are available at http://www.jondawson.com.