I wasn't sure I was reading the packaging right from my vantage several customers back in the line, but there were overflowing display boxes at each of the three registers.
I was adapting to the idea of home pregancy tests in the everythings-a-dollar store when a woman in front of me loaded ten into her basket.
Party favors? Not subtle gifts for her daughter-in-law? An overaffirmation of fertility? An off label use like cleaning grout? I was still wrought with the possibilities as I carried my boring purchases out to the car.
Should I have brought a few as a joke? Could my husband's heart stand my sense of humor? What if my daughters scooped them up without a smile?
How well can you trust a dollar diagnosis? What if half are preset for positive and half for negative knowing they'll get it right occasionally... like the 1-900 sports betting lines that alternate the winner's they give in a two team contest to guarentee that half their customers think they are brilliant.
How did this become so easy and open? Why did I have to be born then?
I attended a Catholic college in the late 1970s, so there was, of course, no sex and no need for any type of clinic on campus.
Thus I've been told that Protestants and other heathens would visit a family planning clinic in a large Victorian house in a very small town nearby.
I understand that co-eds in the waiting room politely averted each other's gaze in the unspoken understanding that everyone was there for a check up and no one knew each other from Philosophy class.
I'd heard that everyone ignored the anicent magazines and kept their fists balled with their chewed fingernails roughly lacerating the soles of their palms as they waited their first name only to be called.
It was rumored they expected something more would be required than filling a Dixie Cup and leaving it on the ledge in the ancient bathroom missing so many mosiac tiles as to make a new pattern. They were grateful when the nurse didn't make eye contact when she handed them the card with the "account number" and phone number to call later that week.
The sign probably said that student checks were welcome, but they paid cash.
And promised never again.
At least until after the phone call.