THAT'S MY DILLUNS

This sign somehow says everything you need to know about my grocery store — a place where patrons need written reminders about appropriate behavior.

No shirt, no shoes, no service. And by the way, said shoes must be wheel-less.

This sign is at the store's entrance. There are two identical warnings inside the door, in case you roll right past the first one in your haste to procure cigarettes and bologna.

The other day, some juvenile delinquent, in broad daylight, was altering the exterior sign to say "NO HOES WITH HEELS." Funny, right?

But that actually reminded me of the one time I had seen someone in the store with wheeled shoes. It was a grown woman, quite conceivably a hoe, with actual roller skates, which I believe are a subset of "SHOES WITH WHEELS." She was about 6'5" with the skates, but her presence was even larger. She came banging through the electronic doors roller-derby style and rumbled right over to the milk case, where she proceeded to spin in tight circles, ankles splayed, while waiting for her companion, whose shoes lacked wheels, to catch up. They both wore tiny cutoffs and spaghetti-strapped tank tops. Both were heavily tattooed. Their extreme excitement over the chocolate milk suggested an altered state of mind. They could have been sisters. Or maybe lovers. Possibly they were mother and daughter. Or maybe they had just met within the hour. It was impossible to tell. After I left the dairy section, I caught glimpses of them steamrolling down various aisles, the wheeled one grabbing this and that shelf to slow her momentum on the corners, the unwheeled one laughing hysterically.

It was the best thing I saw all week.

Sometime after that, the "NO SHOES WITH WHEELS" signs appeared, but I don't know whether it was in response to these two lovelies or to something more pernicious like schoolchildren with those Junior James Bond sneakers with the hidden wheels. (They are walking alongside you and then they are magically gliding, like tiny changelings. It's unsettling.) In any event, this wheeled shoe problem apparently became so widespread as to require a written ban. I have not seen such a sign at any other grocery store, so I am inclined to think this is an issue peculiar not to children but to my store's unruly adult clientele. Again, the boring beige people are targeting what little color remains in this town!

Perhaps, to be fair, the sign came on the heels of some horrific accident, like some innocent, unwheeled shopper being sideswiped by a wheeled one and falling headlong into a pyramid of pork and beans.

Or perhaps the wheels are a menace to the flooring. But really, what could damage the floor more than a steady parade of out-of-kilter shopping carts laden with mounds of hamburger and frozen pizzas? And if they are trying to protect the floor, couldn't they have just left up the most recent — and elegant — defacement of their sign: "NO SHOES"?