Party poppers

This post from waiterrant puts me in mind of condoms.

Do you remember the first time you bought them? I remember my first time with acute embarrassment. So, as is par for the course out here in web space, I will recount the story for your entertainment.

Cast your mind back….no, wait, that won’t work unless you happen to be a rather attractive young girl working on the tills in my local hardware shop some years ago.

The screen shimmers and you see me as a drop dead gorgeous young lad walking into a local shop some days after landing my first sexually serious girlfriend. It was to be my first time buying the protection I was sure that I was soon to need and I was out of my depth.

The place was busy. I suspect that there were no more than about five or six shoppers, truth be told, but they seemed to be everywhere. Walking up and down with their shopping baskets. Looking and choosing and buying.

Why do shops allow more than one person in at a time?

Why can’t all these people go and buy their stuff elsewhere?

I was resigned to walking up and down the place, feigning interest in all manner of crapola waiting until the only two people in the shop were me and the till operator who, thankfully for my nerves, I had not yet clocked as a looker.

From dog food to lipstick, from shampoo to stationary, from vaguely interesting plastic toys to acne treatment, I wandered up and down. I don’t really recall how long I did this for but it felt like an age and somehow I just knew that every shopper in the place had clocked me for condom boy. Like the back of my hand is the phrase people use when they attain the knowledge and that is how I came to know the shop in the time I was there. In fact the only item I could not find were the very things I wanted.

Can I help you sir?

Not bloody likely.

I continued to shuffle about in a state of mild panic until I eventually spotted what I needed on the shelves behind the totty working the till. Just my luck. Cute, but at least I didn’t know her though I was convinced she, like all the other shoppers, knew exactly what my intentions were.

I remember the moment when my resolve hardened. It was like my blood suddenly dropped a few degrees in temperature and washed through my veins. It was now or later (never hadn’t crossed my mind given what was a stake).

I joined the queue at the checkout.

Two in front, two or three behind, all with baskets of stuff. I alone had nothing with me as I had not yet realised that on such occasions one should pick up a few things one doesn’t need before adding the item of dread to the mix.

I was either the queue's condom boy or the queue's headache boy and I was convinced everyone knew I was the former.

I could say that the ringing of the till was like the tolling of a bell but that would be over egging the story a little but let's just accept that my panic was returning with a vengeance and that an exit door had never appeared more attractive than the one I kept looking at as the queue ahead shuffled slowly to the point where it no longer protected me from the moment I was dreading.

Can I have a packet of condoms please?

There, I had said it.

I was convinced the people behind me were staring, with looks of indignation on their faces as an age seemed to pass.

The till girl wasn’t swivelling her chair to reach for what I needed.

She was simply looking at me.

Oh my God, she’s going to speak.

What size would you like?

Oh no! OH NO! Holy sweet mother of God.....

What size?! What size?! I had no idea. Why hadn't I foreseen that condoms came in different sizes? Why hadn’t I realised? It was so obvious now, suddenly, as I stood in that queue that not all men were born equal. Help me someone.

Flustered, I looked at the girl and said…

Normal size please.

Deadpan, No, what size packet? How many condoms? Six? Twelve?

Six please.

I paid, picked up my condoms and ran away.