After yesterday’s musings, I realized I had some more questions that I would love to have the answers to.

1. Why is it that the quieter you try to be when doing something, the more noise you make? I understand the world is full of paradoxes, and for the most part, they make sense. I understand why you have to know how to lose in order to know how to win. I understand why you receive more when you give more. I even understand that the kid who is trying to be quiet so he or she can sneak out ends up making noise so he or she can get caught. But I don’t understand why when you’re trying to be respectful to others by being quiet, you end up making more noise. Occasionally one of my kids or one of their friends will be asleep on the couch when I get up to cook breakfast. I purposely try to be quiet in the kitchen so they can continue sleeping, and it just seems like I make more noise with those pots and pans while trying to be quiet than if I just went about my business normally. I suppose the logical thing to do, then, would be to go about my business normally, but then I feel like I’m not being considerate of the sleeping kid in the living room.

2. Does Wal-Mart ever ask anybody to leave the express checkout lane? You’ve seen the express checkout lane, the one for customer convenience so those customers with 20 items of less don’t have to wait in long lines behind customers who have carts full of stuff. The Super Wal-Marts may have 4 or 5 such lanes; the little Wal-Marts are lucky to have one. And the customer has to be lucky if even one of the lanes is actually open at any given time. The other day I was in one of those checkout lanes, and there were two people in front of me and about two or three behind me. The person who was being checked out had a cart full of items, well over the 20 limit for the express checkout lane. Now, if the store is practically empty and there’s nobody in line, then fine, checkout the customer with 50 items in the express checkout lane. However, if the customer has 50 items and there is a huge line behind that customer, filled with people who obviously have 20 items or less, shouldn’t that 50-item customer be asked to move to a regular lane? I know, to some that may seem rude, but if we aren’t going to enforce the 20-item limit on the express checkout lane designed for customer convenience, then why bother to have the express checkout lane? I’m not suggesting we have cart police who count your items before you hit the checkout lane, and I’m not suggesting if someone has 21 items that he or she gets booted from the line. I am suggesting that when someone has a cart full of items, and it is obvious that it is well over the 20-item limit, and the line is backed up, then perhaps it would be a good idea to ask that customer to move to a regular lane. Yes, they’ll likely get offended, but hey, it’s clearly posted that the express lane is for customers with 20 items or less. And is it better to offend the one customer who is asked to move or the five or six behind him or her who are fuming because they’re waiting in the express lane for a customer who is breaking the rules? Besides, there is still a thing called common courtesy, and getting into line in the express checkout with a cart of well over 20 items is just rude.

3. Why would you listen to a GPS device that was obviously wrong? If the device says, “Turn right” and you look to the right and there is no road, are you going to turn right? A news story on Yahoo! revealed that three students followed their GPS onto a muddy road and that when the tide rose, they were forced to abandon their car. OK, folks. If the tide is rising, there has to be an ocean. And oceans are pretty big bodies of water that would be hard to miss. Wouldn’t you notice you were by an ocean? If the GPS said to turn toward the ocean, wouldn’t common sense prevail? Wouldn’t you at least say to yourself, “There’s the ocean; perhaps I shouldn’t drive in that direction”? In order for their car to be trapped by the tide, they had to get pretty close to the ocean. GPS is great. We’ve used it frequently when traveling to areas we aren’t familiar with. However, we also use some common sense, and if our dear little GPS tries to steer us in a direction that is clearly wrong, we don’t follow the voice command. Just because you have a little voice telling you to turn here or there doesn’t mean you have to listen to it.