I know it may appear that my only contact with humans outside of my family occurs on errand days. There is more truth in that statement than I would like to admit. I do, however, still have the ability to recognize when something is out of the ordinary. Or, if that ability has quietly left the building, I at least hope to score some points when I retell the story later.

Having already drained the hot tub twice this year, I have decided to keep a tighter rein on the chemicals. Since I have no desire to learn how to test the water myself—apparently there are limits to how much responsibility I am willing to accept for my own hot tub—I wandered into Leslie’s again.

When I pulled in, I saw a car with a stroller and baby coming out of it. I was hoping they were headed to Rally House to get an OU T-shirt. Surely that would make more sense than what happened next. Nope. They were going to Leslie’s to have their water tested, too.

For a brief moment, I considered running past them and getting my water tested first. I may fail socially in a number of ways, but even I knew that would be wrong. So I waited patiently while mostly keeping my mouth shut as the baby-mama went first. My bottle of hot tub water was already set up for testing, so I stood there like a man waiting for the results of a medical procedure he had performed on himself.

When it was my turn and before the test was completed, the bottle was pushed back toward me. A little probing revealed that the employees had been having a problem with customers not getting their bottles back, resulting in a growing collection of bottles under the counter, each conveniently labeled with a phone number. Apparently, even returning a plastic bottle is now a process that requires documentation.

Eventually, the results came back. High phosphates. Organic material.

The source could have been any number of things. It might have been the hockey boys making a jet-less visit to the hot tub last time. It might have been something else entirely. I prefer hockey boy broth as the explanation because it allows me to blame someone else. The hot tub will do what it does. I just don’t want to be responsible for why it does it.

Sam’s provided most of the other entertainment for the day. After getting gas, I walked inside prepared to fight my usual battle with the compacted shopping carts. To my surprise, there were carts separated and ready to go. I made sure to thank the greeter for helping me avoid the conundrum that must be solved every time I visit Sam’s: finding a cart that is actually usable without having to perform a minor demolition project.

After that, I happily sampled the donuts. Unfortunately, the guy handing out the samples had no idea what the difference was between a cake donut and a yeast donut. He knew the flavors. He knew the decorations. But the basic taxonomy of donuts appeared to be outside his area of expertise.

What are they teaching kids in school today?

I passed on the Dude Wipes. Those are not included in our hockey boy billet fees. We determine what is covered, but we don’t get more money if we spoil them. If my hiney isn’t spoiled, neither is theirs.

The parents of our boys have been instructed to send their billet fees to my Venmo account. Since a significant portion of what hockey boys do is eat, it seems only appropriate that I use that money to pay for the food and necessary paper products we buy at Sam’s.

Unfortunately, I didn’t think of that while I was shopping.

Instead, I thought I was being clever by scanning everything as I went. Eventually, I abandoned the whole process in the Sam’s app because paying with Venmo wasn’t convenient. I then circled the cart scanning things like one of the other losers who had somehow become technology-challenged in the middle of a warehouse store.

As Sam’s visits go, this one was about average. The parking lot, however, was holding the real excitement.

After unloading the groceries and returning the cart, I didn’t pull straight out of my parking space. The steering wheel was leaning to the right. I was barely halfway out when I heard a noise.

I didn’t think it sounded like metal on metal, but the radio was on and it was Two-fer Tuesday, so I wasn’t fully committed to listening.

In an attempt to be responsible, I backed the car up and looked at the vehicle to my right. The fact that there was no additional sound of metal being rearranged probably should have been a clue, but I wanted to be a good citizen and double-check.

I saw and heard nothing that raised a red flag for driving sins. And that stupid app on my phone, had I still chosen to turn it on, wouldn’t have gathered any insurance-rate-raising data from my parking lot maneuvering.

Still, knowing I wasn’t a perfect driver worked on me during the drive home. The optimistic part of my brain was perfectly happy to believe something had shifted in the trunk. The part of my brain that isn’t quite so naïve kept asking why I hadn’t been more thorough after hearing the noise.

When I got home, that part of my brain went exploring on the passenger side of the car.

That’s when I saw it.

A previously undetected flaw in the paint screamed, “CAR DOOR DING.”

It didn’t feel like a scrape caused by some guy driving through the Sam’s parking lot as if he were the only person there. It looked more like the kind of thing that happens when two perfectly innocent cars have a brief disagreement and one of them loses.

Of course, I had to tell Judy about my possible sin.

I view Judy as my confessor. I figure my moral compass was engineered to bless behaviors that make sense only to a male brain, so I run things by her occasionally to make sure our compasses are still synchronized.

On this one, she reassured me. She didn’t see anything unreasonable about what I had done. There was no big hug followed by, “It’s going to be okay.”

I got the more practical, “Don’t worry about it.”

The other thing about Judy is that she is a non-practicing attorney. I don’t think her compass has caved in the way some legal professionals’ compasses apparently do, but her needle may be skewed a little.

Then again, all of our compasses are probably skewed a little.

I just pray that any skewing that takes place doesn’t eventually assume I am incapable of making mistakes. I have lived with this guy long enough to know he still has more arrogance than he should have. Every now and then, getting figuratively pinched by reality is probably a good thing. It knocks the overconfidence down a few notches.

Of course, that’s only the overconfidence I can still salvage after being married for a few decades.