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Please don’t bring your small children to the grocery store. I’m serious. I understand that they’ve ruined your life, but heaven forbid anyone else try to enjoy their time out.

Keep them at home. Get a babysitter or a cage or something. I don’t want to see your obnoxious brats throwing canned soup down the aisles. I don’t want to hear them fussing and screaming for a brand new Barbie doll. I definitely don’t want to discover their used diapers in the bathroom stalls.

There are no exceptions. If you think your son or daughter has never misbehaved, you probably have the worst one.

When I was a kid, I was terrible in stores. I hated shopping so much. All I wanted to do was stay at home and play with my Power Rangers. As soon as we’d get to the store, I’d deliberately piss off my mother by running in and out of those self-opening doors. And once that grew tiresome, I’d start pushing grocery carts at the doors to trigger the sensors. It got violent. One time I almost killed a guy.

Looking back, while at the grocery store, there was only one thing that kept me calm and quiet. And no, it wasn’t duct tape or Ritalin. My kryptonite was the automatic coupon dispensers.

The Automatic Coupon Dispenser is the greatest toy ever invented. Kids race to those things like June bugs to Bug Zappers. When I was a youngin’, I’d be mesmerized by those blinking red boxes of splendor and wonder. I’d rip out coupons and throw them around like confetti.

Unfortunately, as the years went by, the dispensers got smarter. They weren’t quite at Skynet level, but speaking from experience, they were definitely smarter than a fifth grader. With high-tech sensors and timers, they no longer dispensed multiple coupons at once.

I was devastated. I was defeated. I needed that extra coupon. I needed that extra twenty cents off of Rogaine. And no, I wasn’t a balding twelve year old. I just wanted the satisfaction of pulling that damn coupon.

At least I always had my previous coupons. I had quite the collection. My favorite coupon was for a free “female enhancement” product. To this day, I have no idea what it was supposed to enhance. And frankly, I don’t want to know.

My relationship with automatic coupon dispensers was a tad unsettling. Why was I so obsessed with them? Why did we share such a strong connection? Perhaps I was a coupon dispenser in a past life.

Yup, that explains everything. In my past life, I was an automatic coupon dispenser. I’d spend my days hiding in grocery store aisles. As families would come by, I’d unsuspectingly flash them and shoot my load. Kids loved it. They’d get pleasure from having something to play with.

Yikes. That sounds creepy. On second thought, maybe I was a pedophile in my past life. Maybe I was Michael Jackson.

Yup, that explains everything even better. I was definitely Michael Jackson. I’m sure you’re doing the math and skeptical because we were both alive at the same time. Well, we actually weren’t. The real Michael Jackson died long before I was born. Record labels didn’t want to lose money, so they replaced him with a random white girl. Hence the appearance.

I should have given her my female enhancement coupons.