I’m standing at the check out counter at Ingles. It’s a holiday weekend. People are coming to raid my pantry, so I must restock.

I made a list, but I strayed from the list a few times. Maybe several times. Thus, my buggy runneth over.

“Good morning, sir. How are you today?”

My Ingles team member is a very friendly young man. I can barely see his eyes. He reminds me of the sheep dog on the Wiley Coyote episode: “Morning Fred.” “Morning Stan.” They pass at the time clock during shift change.

“I’m great. It’s gonna be a good holiday weekend. How ‘bout you?”

“I have to work on Memorial Day. A whole 8 hours, too.”

The laser scanner is ringing up each item as he waves my bread, butter, and eggs across the glass.

I miss the sound of a cash register. No wires. No bar codes. No beeping. Just the sound of metal keys being pressed, the pull of the handle, and that one simple ding when the cash drawer opens.

Currently, four scanners are going off at one time and I feel like I’m in a battle scene from Star Wars.

I have a bottle of grape juice in the buggy. He looks it over.

Mr. Sheep Dog says, “I’m gonna have to see some ID. What’s your birth date?”

“1956,” I say.

“No way, Dude.”

“Way.”

I pull out my license and show it to him.

“This is brand new. Just got my picture redone a few months ago.”

“That’s crazy,” he says. “You’re almost ancient.” He repeats, “1956.”

“Tell me about it.”

I’ve been suffering from muscle spasms and neck pain all this week. I did something funky last Saturday. A little work. A little lifting. A little exercise. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Okay, the exercise is out of the ordinary. I’ve gotten soft and puggy since I retired. Maybe even since I turned 60 in some other decade.

So, I recently got a new rowing machine. Easy on the joints. Works most major muscle groups. Just trying to stay fit for the grandkids and hopefully get rid of the bulge in the middle.

I did five minutes on the machine Saturday night. That’s it. I’m new to this, but evidently old guys should do one minute for a few weeks and work up slowly to five.

I didn’t feel any twinge, or snap, or crackle at the time. I felt good. I went to bed feeling good. Slept good. Until the alarm went off. I tried to raise my head so I could roll over to turn off the noise and winced uncontrollably.

I think Hulk Hogan grabbed me by that muscle that slopes away from the base of the neck, squeezed hard enough to cause convulsions, released for a second, and grabbed again. Three times in a row. He may even have slammed me against the wall a few times. The whole experience is kind’a fuzzy.

Let me just say, I do not look pretty curled up in the fetal position begging for mercy. Teeth clinched. Inaudible phrases for which I probably need to repent. It took me ten minutes to get out of the bed. And when I did, I stood still. Afraid to move.

All of you under 40, this is what you have to look forward to.

That was Sunday morning. By Tuesday the spasms had stopped, and I could actually bend down to tie my shoes. By Wednesday, I ventured out on some short errands. Thursday? I’m at Ingles.

Ingles has an interesting bagging system. It’s designed to help the customer visually separate his cold items from the regular stock items. Blue bags for anything that is stored in the fridge or freezer. Things like sandwich meat, frozen veggies, juice, milk. You get the idea.

The brown bags are for all the other items that go up on the pantry shelf or inside the cupboard. Your cereal, sugar, and coffee. They all go in the brown bag.

This is great for two reasons. For one, I take a cold storage bag with me to the grocery store. I live 30 minutes from the store and it’s 86°. When I get to the truck, I simply take all the blue bags and stuff them in the cold sack. Easy-peasy. Second, when I get home, same scenario. Blue is fridge. Brown is pantry.

I like this system. This alone is reason enough to shop at Ingles. But . . . the system is only as good as the employee implementing it.

I have witnessed the perfect execution of this system on many occasions. As I stand here at the register, it becomes increasingly evident that today will not be perfect.

Sheep dog is passing my items along to a young man whom I’m not sure has yet reached puberty. He’s very talkative and engaging. Nice young man. But he either failed to attend the bag training class or is color blind. I’m not sure.

I know the system. It’s fairly simple. And I’m watching this young man put my loaf bread in a blue bag. Two loaves. Two separate bags. The chips go in a brown bag. Right on. Then he tosses the Kraft cheese in with the chips. I’ll have to find that when I get to the truck.

Besides a stiff neck, one sign that I’m more mature than I used to be is that I chose not to say anything to him. I didn’t correct his bagging technique. I did not call over a manager. I may be ancient according to Sheep Dog, but I’m pretty mellow when it comes to . . . uh . . . stupid things that amuse me.

I’m not saying the young man is stupid. Don’t hear that. I’m just saying that the blue/brown bag system is so simply brilliant, it’d be pretty hard to mess it up.

My cashier hands me a register tape about a quarter mile long. The young bagger asks me if I need help getting my groceries to the car. I’ve seen how he bags stuff.

“No. I believe I can handle it.”

Thinking about the two of them working the holiday together, I say: “Y’all enjoy yourselves on Monday. I’ll be kicked back at the house.”

The shaggy one, eyes still hidden, gives me a big smile, turns and points his double-barrel index fingers at me.

“Have a good one,” he says.

I shoot my double-barrels back at him and wonder if I will ever see him again. Nice kid.

The asphalt is hot as I push the buggy to my truck. I always park so dang far away from the door. It’s not that I don’t want my doors dinged. I don’t, but that’s not it.

I’m old and don’t care to waste time looking for a spot up front.

I open the back door and begin the process of searching through every bag for my cold stuff. The whole time I’m thinking, “The blue bags would have made this a whole lot simpler.”

But what do I know? I’m just an old guy with a very stiff neck.