I’m just getting eggs and milk!

I preach for Garnett Church of Christ most Sundays. At 7:30 am one Sunday morning my wife, Jill, asked me to go to the store and get milk and eggs. She’s going to make a breakfast casserole.

As usual when it’s milk and eggs I drive one mile and pass Walmart and go straight the only place any self-respecting Oklahoman buys milk and eggs: Braum’s.

When I arrive, this is what I see (pictured to the left): Fifty people crowded around the front door waiting to get in for half price on everything because this location is closing and moving two doors down to a beautiful new store.

Come on, I just want some milk and eggs so my wife can make a casserole. So I walk up, someone says, “you have to get a number.”

The woman guarding the door gives me a number.

Thirty-three. And they haven’t even opened yet. When they do, they let five people in. Those people shop for fifteen minutes before the first person exits and another person can go in. There are no limits, so people are walking out with 10 sacks of groceries in a place where few people ever leave with more than one brown sack on normal days.

Should I wait? I have to preach this morning. Why am I standing here? After a while someone leaves and hands me their number: 12. I think it will take just a few minutes but people are averaging 10 minutes each inside. I’ve been gone thirty minutes now and I call Jill.

“Where are you?”

“Uh, there’s a half price sale at Braum’s. They are giving numbers. I’m standing outside. I just got a lower number and it shouldn’t be long.”

“You are preaching this morning–what are you doing?”

“I’m waiting to get eggs and milk. I’m going to have to get them somewhere.”

This is what they did before Perestroika, I thought. They stood in line. I can stand in line, then go preach. So I did. It would be any minute.

They are letting people go in on the same number who claim to be “family members.” It doesn’t take long for people to claim long lost family status and go in together on low numbers in front of me. How do the overbearing dishonest people seem to find the people pleasers who can’t say no?

After a while people are chattering about the new black market for numbers and how some are dishonest just to get half price Braum’s. One group stood condemning today’s youth, saying they have no respect, then these adults literally walked up and lied to the Braum’s employee, saying they were family members when several of us saw they had clearly just met and hatched a plan to enter together. Seems like the adults are the ones with little respect and could learn something from the youth of today.

An hour passes and finally my number came up, and several knew I was going in only for milk and eggs, and I made a commitment that I would. So when I went in, I found plenty of milk and bought three gallons. No eggs–only egg whites in cartons. I’ve never bought those. So I bought five.

So when I walked out–in record time, only taking a couple minutes–I got a standing ovation. Well, they were already standing, but they clapped and cheered my speed. But it looked like I’d gotten more than eggs and milk. I stopped and showed the crowd proof there was just eggs and milk.

Then walking to my truck, a woman who had been out front was sitting in her car waiting for her number and eating a sausage biscuit. She flung open her door and with her mouth full said, “I thought you were just getting eggs and milk!”

I set my paper bags down, one broke and spilled cartons on the sidewalk. I dumped everything in one bag and looked up at the accusing woman. “I did. These cartons are eggs–all they had. Just got eggs and milk, like I said.”

The woman swallowed her bite of sausage biscuit and gave a nod of approval.

I picked up my eggs and milk and went home.