I have a gift. It is a gift neither enviable nor useful. In fact, if I could rub elbows with a total stranger and, in so doing, transfer this gift to that unsuspecting person, I’d do it without thinking twice.

My gift is this:

Whenever I’m in a store, particularly if I’m in a hurry or if it is getting close to Christmas and all is chaos, I always pick the wrong checkout line.

It doesn’t matter if I have two to choose from or ten. It doesn’t matter if every line but one has 5 people in it and I pick the remaining line that only has two customers. Without fail, the line I pick is the wrong one. The slow one. The problem-laden one.

I slowly watch all the other people who joined lines at the same time as me move their way up to their prospective cashiers, pay for their items and leave the store…while I stand, helplessly, frustrated that once again, my line was the one with the hold-up. My first piece of advice to you is this: if you are in a store with me, never join me in the checkout line that I choose. Never.

But I have some more advice for you today. Because of my gift, I’ve been able to compile a list of “wrong line scenarios.” I’ll share them with you here so that if you ever see one of them developing you’ll know what to do: get thee to another checkout line. If you don’t, you only have yourself to blame.

1. The surprise returner. This scenario is all about the lady in front of you who appears to have a simple, no-hassle transaction. She’s buying three items, does so quickly, and then…just as she’s about to leave, she says, “Oops, I almost forgot – I have a return.” She proceeds to dig some tiny item out of her purse and presents it to the cashier with an apologetic, “But I don’t have the receipt.” The cashier – being some of the temporary help hired for the holiday season – doesn’t know what to do with a lady who has an item to return, but lacks the receipt, price tag, and any actually useful information. You might as well pull up a chair; you’ll be here for a while.

2. The group shopper. You’ve analyzed the lines. You’ve surreptitiously counted items in people’s carts, and you’ve chosen the line where a nice-looking young lady is next in line, and the best part is – she only has 7 items in her cart! She loads her treasures onto the belt and just as you prepare to place the little divider-doohicky on the belt that indicates her order is complete and yours is about to begin, she calls out, “Mom! Over here!” A nice-looking older woman pushes her cart up in front of yours, smiles at you, offers a simple, “Excuse me, I’m with her” and begins to stack her 572 items on the belt. Maybe they’re not as nice as they look.

3. The flashing cashier light. You know this one. As the cashier is checking out the customer in front of you, something goes horribly awry with her order and the cashier has to flip the little switch that makes her line-number-light blink. She may also have to call out, “Price check on 8! Price check on 8!” or perhaps, “Manager needed on register 5!” Rats! Foiled again.

4. The malfunctioning register. As the receipt prints out for the man in front of you, the cash register begins making strange sounds. The end of his receipt gets mangled. Perhaps the register even begins spewing smoke or emitting odd odors. The cashier, who clearly was not hired for any technical ability, can only say, “Shoot! What in the world is wrong with this thing?” She then opens the little door to the register tape and starts pulling out levers and springs and other mechanical-looking items. Needless to say, this approach doesn’t work. Too bad for you, all your stuff is on the belt. It takes you a while to pack it all back up in the cart and get to another register. At the back of the line, of course.

5. The missing spouse. Everything appears to be going just fine. The lady in front of you had only 6 items, they all rung up without a hitch, the cashier tells the customer her total. But then she replies, “Oh, I’m sorry. I sent my husband back to get a different color of yarn – I had picked up the wrong one initially. He’ll be right back.” She smiles – somewhat apologetically – at both you and the cashier. The husband doesn’t return. The lady fidgets, the cashier starts looking a bit steamed. Still no husband. You look around and try to weigh the odds: If I get in the next line over, at the end of the line, would I get to the cashier before this errant husband returns? Who knows? All you know is that it would appear that he headed to the craft department by way of the sporting goods department and apparently got waylaid by lures or ammunition or camouflage underpants. Better luck next time.

I sincerely hope that none of you have quite the rotten track-record that I do when it comes to checkout lines. I’m sad to report that I’ve experienced all of these scenarios in the last month or so. Is it any wonder that I do most of my Christmas shopping online?

Let’s say you’ve decided to bake up a scrumptious batch of Giant Ginger Cookies (a recipe you can find over at Unfinished Work). And let’s say that your 1-cup measuring spoon thingy is sitting in soapy water, so you have to use your 1/2-cup measuring spoon thingy to measure out the 4.5 cups of flour. And let’s say you think, “No problem, I’m a math whiz, that’ll be 9 half-cups.”

My advice to you is this: do not attempt to measure out the 9 half-cups of flour while Mickey Mouse Clubhouse is on in the background. Because you see, this show, being aimed at toddlers and all, is big on counting. So while you’re trying to count out 1, 2, 3… half-cups of flour, Mickey will be counting out 12 stepping stones or some other irrelevant objects. And he’ll be counting far too quickly for you to synchronize your flour-scooping with. And if you decide to just wait until he’s done, well… as soon as you start to count your flour out (for the third time, say), he’ll be on to counting something else…thereby messing up your flour count once again.

Theoretically, of course.

(But once you finally get everything counted and measured correctly, those theoretical ginger cookies sure are yummy!)