City of Chicago: An Open Apology

We interrupt this series of feminist essays to announce some breaking news. We will return to your regularly scheduled programming shortly and apologize for any inconvenience.

Here’s what I was wearing:

  • Ginormous 1990’s elastic-at-the-cuff grey sweat pants. Why? Because my old favorite plaid lounging pants ripped at the crotch last week and I had to throw them away.
  • Old Navy® camisole/bra. It’s a bra and it’s a camisole. All in one. But there’s no denying that it’s essentially a bra.
  • Brown argyle dress socks from work.

    • Here’s what I was doing:

  • Laying on my couch.
  • Drinking scotch.
  • Watching The Parkers.
  • Reading last week’s People magazine.
    Here’s what I was eating:

  • Pringles Reduced Fat sour cream & onion potato crisps.
  • Leftover Thai noodles.
  • Half a banana.
    Here’s what happened:

  • My cats, Punch and Judy, were screeching by the window.
  • I yelled at them to be quiet.
  • There was a sudden and loud knock at my door.
    Here’s what I did:

  • Freaked out.
  • There was no way to pretend I wasn’t there, since I had just screamed: “For the love of god, Judy, will you shut the hell up? For the last time – you are an inside cat!”
  • Frantically searched for clothes.
  • Grabbed a giant plaid flannel shirt that was in my laundry basket.
  • Put on some huge black penny loafers.
  • Answered the door.
    To say that I looked like a bag lady would be an insult to bag ladies. There are so many questions that can be raised and fingers that can be pointed, but really, hindsight is 20/20. Questions like – if I had time to find a flannel shirt, why didn’t I have time to find normal pants? Or why didn’t I slip on tennis shoes, so it at least looked like maybe I was working out? Or why was I wearing that outfit in the first place?
    But what’s done is done, so to ask me these questions now is really just pointless and hurtful. I try very hard to live my life without regret, or at least to repress the regrettable choices I’ve made so that they only haunt me in my dreams or during hypnotherapy. This day is no exception.
    When I cautiously opened the door, I discovered that it was my new next door neighbor, Klaus. He’s from New York – Brooklyn, to be exact – and simply wanted to know where the laundry room was. As soon as he asked me that, he looked at my outfit and thought to himself, “I’m pretty sure that this woman and washing machines are not well acquainted. I wonder what the penalty would be for breaking my lease.”
    “Ummm… oh. Laundry? Yes. Out back. There’s a big lock. Need quarters. By dumpster. Duh… duh… duh…”
    I became completely incoherent because all I could focus on was my sheer humiliation at answering the door in this outfit. The word “mortified” just kept running through my head, over and over. I didn’t even have the presence of mind to say something like, “Oh, you caught me in the middle of sweeping the chimney.”
    This was my one chance to get in good with one of the neighbors now that the couple with the meowing daughter moved out. He’s from New York, not familiar with Chicago, and this is the impression I gave him. Yes, not only is Chicago a city where the Mayor can bulldoze the airport under the cover of darkness, but this is a place where it’s acceptable to wear loafers with outdated sweat pants and an ill-buttoned flannel shirt.
    I probably had some noodles stuck to my face… I can’t be sure.
    He was so polite, but he couldn’t take his eyes off my shoes. As we spoke, I tried to be very expressive with my face and gesture a lot with my hands to draw his attention away from my outfit. Just as I was channeling a combination of Lucille Ball and Marcel Marceau, Punch somehow escaped in between the elephantine columns that were my legs. I had to run up the stairs after him in my gigantic loafers, clomping up each flight like some sort of storm trooper.
    I’m so sorry, Chicago. I’ve let you down. Not only are we the 5th fattest city in the nation – again – but now I have single-handedly put the entire city on Blackwell’s Worst Dressed List for 2005. Will you ever forgive me? I’m not sure I can forgive myself.
    Now, I’m not trying to shift the blame here, but is that the way people do things in New York? They just knock on some stranger’s door in the middle of the night (7:30pm) like savages? I mean, we may be obese, but in Chicago, we have an unwritten code. We call people. We schedule appointments. We leave post-its. We don’t just knock on doors! And do you know why? Because we are all too aware of the likelihood that the person on the other side of that door may have potato chip crumbs in her hair and be wearing GINORMOUS ELASTIC-AT-THE-CUFF GREY SWEATPANTS!
    I now feel compelled to walk around the apartment in a ball gown, just in case Klaus ever knocks again. But let’s face it – the next knock I hear at my door will be the Homicide squad when Klaus turns me in because he thought he smelled a dead body in my closet. I will tell the police that it was just the unusual combination of sour cream & onion and banana, but they’ll still need to search the place.
    And then they’ll find them: the ginormous elastic-at-the-cuff grey sweatpants. And Klaus will say, “Those are the ones! That’s what she was wearing when I stopped by the other day. She seemed jumpy, like she was hiding something. Get out the black light!”
    The police will take me down to the station for questioning, and release me after a few hours due to lack of evidence. But it will be too late. They will have already seen my sweatpants.
    Oh god. I can’t say it enough. Forgive me, dear city. Forgive me. Forgive me.

    • Filed under: General on January 17th, 2005 | Comments Off

    Hard Day’s Night

    Thursday in Seattle was a hard day. I hadn’t had a blog in 24 hours. I didn’t know just how addicted I was to the Internet – you never do – until I was alone in a foreign land, with no access to blogger. I shouldn’t be surprised, though, because I have a highly addictive personality. It’s not my fault; it’s my mother’s. She gave birth to me in March, which made me a Pisces, which made me devoid of any willpower.
    Elizabeth Taylor and I almost share the same birthday, and my life mirrors hers in a way that makes me fear for my future. She fell off a horse as a teen while filming National Velvet, sparking a destructive addiction to painkillers. I fell onto the couch as a teen while watching the film Blue Velvet, sparking a destructive addiction to David Lynch movies.
    She has a desperate need for love and acceptance, which she unsuccessfully tries to fulfill by bouncing from one unhealthy marriage to the next. I have a desperate need for love and acceptance, which I unsuccessfully try to fulfill by bouncing from one unhealthy imaginary marriage to the next.
    She played Maggie “The Cat” in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. I sometimes play with my cats on a hot tin roof. You should see them jump!
    She has Michael Jackson, I have Seamus. It’s eerie.
    Crippled by my Piscean weakness, I spent much of Thursday with the shakes, nervously drumming my fingers on the dashboard, and scanning the streets for signs of an Internet café. Fortunately in Seattle, local law mandates one Internet café per six Starbucks, so that meant that there was an Internet café on every block.
    My co-worker, however, was not in favor of bailing on our client meetings so that I could read the latest hijinks of my favorite bloggers. I tried to explain that it wouldn’t take me long, that I just needed a few hours to make sure I hadn’t missed anything important, but the rental car was in her name, so I had to sit back and take it. She doesn’t get you. She doesn’t get you at all. I hate her.
    While we were meeting with the client, I could feel beads of sweat collecting on my upper lip, and started to feel queasy. I excused myself to use the restroom, and immediately splashed some cold water on my face. I looked up from the sink and saw myself in the mirror – the pale and clammy skin, my dry tongue, the dark circles under my eyes – and thought, “My god, what have I become?”
    Just then, some women came in to fix their hair. I saw my opportunity and grabbed it. As they walked out of the bathroom, I followed them past the front desk and into the office area. No one gave me a second glance as I snuck in behind them. I knew I probably only had ten minutes at best before my absence would become concerning, so I walked with purpose around the maze of cubes until I found an empty desk. The name plate said: Susan O’Connor.
    After checking to make sure no one saw me, I sat down and started to log onto her Internet.
    “Well, Susan, whoever you are. I hope you don’t mind me borrowing your pc for a few minutes.”
    Come on. Come on. Doesn’t this company have DSL?
    Damn! Password protected.
    I rifled around Susan’s desk to see if I could figure out her password:
    Soccermom04? Denied.
    Irisheyes? Denied.
    Puglover? Denied.
    Please Contact System Administrator To Unlock Password.

    Oops.
    Just as I got up from Susan’s desk, she arrived with coffee in hand.
    “Uhh… can I help you with something?”
    I had to think quickly.
    “Yeah, hi. I’m looking for accounting, can you tell me if I’m on the right floor?”
    “This is accounting. Who are you looking for?”
    Crap. What are the odds?
    “Uhh, actually it’s finance that I’m looking for. I need to talk to Dave in finance, but I’m running late for a meeting, so you know what? I’ll just leave him a quick voice mail instead. Thanks!”
    I quickly made my exit and slipped back into the client meeting. My co-worker shot me a dirty look, but I don’t think the client paid much attention. Thanks to a series of deep breathing exercises and the remainder of my venti skim latté, I miraculously made it through the meeting. When I got back to the hotel, I realized that I really should have paid better attention to the inordinately chipper woman at the front desk when I first checked in, because I looked at the information sheet she handed me with my key on Wednesday, and saw the sweetest four words I had ever read: Free High Speed Internet.

    So why? Why hadn’t I read this earlier? I think that maybe the gods were trying to teach me something. It’s really true – you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. I think that perhaps 2005 will be focused on appreciating what I have, so I’ll start here and now: I love you, Internet. And I’ll never take you for granted again.

    Filed under: General on January 6th, 2005 | Comments Off

    Give Peace a Chance

    Looks like Seamus is at it again. If he’s not getting Natasha and me arrested at 2:00am, or trashing a Starbucks, he’s fueling the East Coast/West Coast blogger rivalry. I learned through the grapevine that Seamus has been trying to instigate some war between my old friend, TuBlog Shakur, and me.
    This all goes back to my youth – when I was a young gangblogger, I was known on the streets as the Notorious B.L.O.G., or Bloggy Smalls to my crew. TuBlog Shakur and I met when he was just coming onto the blog scene. I showed him the ropes – I linked to him, he linked back. We’d leave funny comments on each other’s blogs. It was cool.
    But then TuBlog moved to a western suburb of Chicago, and things started to change. There’s just a different attitude toward blogging on the West side. It’s a more in-your-face, hard-edged style that I’m just not down with.
    TuBlog and I would run into each other at a few of the big blogging galas, where he’d roll up in his tricked out Ford Windstar with some young hoochie on his arm – I think her name was J-Chlo. He got sucked into the glitz and the glamour of the business, and lost touch with what blogging is really about.
    So last week, I caught wind of an email Seamus sent to TuBlog:
    “Bloggy Smalls does a much better job updating her blog than you do. She has new stuff several times a week. Sometimes you go for weeks without posting a new entry. I may stop reading your blog altogether and just stick with her. Plus, I heard she called you a punk.
    If you want to keep any sort of blog cred at all, you’d better do something about Bloggy. Unless you really are as much of a punk as she said you were…”

    Personally, I’ve never bought into this whole East Coast/West Coast blogger crap. Maybe when I was younger I did, but now that I’m older, life is just too precious to waste on pointless rivalries. This fighting has got to stop, so I’m here today to offer an olive branch to my friend and fellow blogger.
    TuBlog, if you’re reading this, what do you say we put aside our petty differences once and for all? Does it really matter who blogs more, or who knows how to post photos on his blog, or who has a Sean John designer case for his iPod? We’re all working toward the same goal, so I say we throw down our mouses, toss aside this silly East Coast/West Coast thing, and just blog like we’ve never blogged before.
    Blog on blog violence stops right here, right now.
    Peace.

    Filed under: General on January 5th, 2005 | Comments Off

    Reasons you should not let your friends determine your New Year’s Resolutions

    …particularly after drinking cheap Greek wine, which shall, from this day forward, be known as headache wine:

    Jenny’s New Year’s Resolutions
    1. Drink Thai bubble tea and like it
    2. No more fires
    3. Make Natasha happy
    4. More bowling
    5. Get tattoo (possibly henna)
    6. Less human interaction
    7. More technology
    8. Less eyeballin’
    9. Break up with Dr. Greene (again)

    Happy New Year everyone!

    Friends don’t let friends drive. Ever.

    Filed under: General on December 31st, 2004 | Comments Off

    Just Call Me “Lefty”

    I now have another item to add to my ever-growing list of: “Reasons I may need to someday saw off my own arm.”
    I checked in to the hotel in downtown Seattle late Wednesday night because our plane was delayed, the car rental company couldn’t find my Hummer, the hotel had me sharing a room with my co-worker, and so on.
    So after a very long journey, I finally got into my room, hung up my clothes, changed into pajamas, went to the bathroom, flushed the toilet, and heard… nothing. You know, the usual routine.
    With the sense of dread and frustration that always accompanies a malfunctioning toilet, I quickly tried to assess the situation. When I pushed the handle down, it just kind of loosely jiggled back and forth, clearly serving as nothing more than a decoration. I could see that this trip was starting out really well.
    Fortunately, I’ve seen a few episodes of Extreme Home Makeover, so I took the toilet tank cover off and noticed that the little chain that is supposed to be attached to the handle was curled up nicely at the bottom of the tank. Beautiful.
    It was late, I was tired, I had to flush, so I did it. I pushed up my sleeve and dunked my arm – up to the elbow – into the toilet tank water.
    Hotel. Toilet. Tank. Water.
    With the speed of a ninja, I grabbed the chain and looped it back onto the handle, so the toilet once again functioned as god had intended it to.
    This bears repeating: my arm was submerged up to the elbow in hotel toilet water. Oh sure, I tried to convince myself that the water in the tank was actually clean. It was the only thing I could do in order to build up the courage to dunk my arm in there in the first place. I knew it was a lie then, and I know it’s a lie now. Exactly how much antibacterial soap do you think it takes to kill the germs of 100,000 previous guests?
    And now that I look more closely, I may not even have to saw it off, because it seems to be dissolving into a smooth little stump pretty well on its own. Guess I’d better start learning how to type with one hand. Dammit! Why didn’t I think to dunk my left arm in the water?

    Filed under: General on December 29th, 2004 | Comments Off

    Holiday Translator

    What time is it? = When can we open the wine?
    When is company coming over? = When is the absolute last minute before I have to change out of these pajamas?
    What a unique gift, Jenny! Where did you get it? = I wonder if they accept returns without receipts?
    So boys, was Santa good to you this year? = Please give me affirmation that I’m a good aunt and that your affection can be bought.
    I can taste the cod, but is there also a little cinnamon in this? = I must determine this unholy combination of flavors so that it never crosses my tongue again.
    Well, I’m wiped out. I’m going to bed. = I’m going to flip through 160 channels of digital cable for the next three hours or until my eyes bleed, whichever comes first.

    Filed under: General on December 28th, 2004 | Comments Off

    Come Fly With Me

    Happily, the flight to Seattle was only about two-thirds full, so I was able to sit in a row with an empty seat between my neighbor and me. Not that he wasn’t nice – he seemed perfectly lovely – but I gots to have my elbow room.
    About 45 minutes into the flight, I noticed a very unfamiliar smell. This caused me great concern – I’d prefer to not smell anything at all when I’m locked and loaded inside a 737, but an unfamiliar smell is even more disturbing. Luckily, having previously worked in the travel industry, I knew exactly how to handle the situation: I discreetly tugged at the flight attendant’s skirt as she walked by and said, “I don’t want to alarm you or any of the other passengers, but I detect a very strange odor coming from the back of the cabin. Having previously worked in the travel industry, I feel certain it smells like bioterrorism. Are you familiar with the scent of anthrax?”
    “Smell? Oh, you mean the food? We’re just about to serve dinner.”
    Food? With smell? On a plane? Last I checked, pretzels and windmill cookies were pretty much odorless, so what the heck could be wafting from the back cabin? As it turned out, we got a meal on this flight. A hot meal. I truly cannot recall the last time I was on a flight that served a hot meal, but maybe that’s because I truly cannot recall the last time I was on a flight that took this farging long. Over four hours in the air? Are you kidding me? Isn’t there some jet stream we can hop onto to save us half an hour or so? Don’t we have turbo on this hunk of junk? Press that red button. Who’s the customer here? I said press it!
    But getting back to the food, I got pretty excited at the prospect of a hot meal since I was feeling a little peckish from my long wait in the airport. I was waiting for what seemed like forever to get my meal, so when the flight attendant came to my row and asked if I wanted dinner, I flashed her a big smile and nodded eagerly.
    “Would you like beef Stroganoff or chicken with rice?”
    Oh god.

    Please tell me that she didn’t just say Stroganoff. She couldn’t have. Maybe I’m a little delirious due to the thin air. Maybe she said something that sounded like Stroganoff.
    I ran through all possible variations of that dreaded phrase, desperately hoping to find one that seemed more feasible than beef Stroganoff:
    Would you like meat dough and cough?
    Would you like teeth showing off?

    Would you like cheap blow? F off!

    I had to face the fact that while all of these alternatives were vastly more appealing than what I thought I heard, this woman was, in fact, offering me creamed meat on top of fat wet noodles.
    Egads.
    “Chicken with rice, please.”
    The flight attendant dug around in her cart for a minute before she turned back to me and, with one simple sentence, became my mortal enemy.
    “I’m sorry, it looks like we’re out of the chicken. Can I get you the beef Stroganoff?”
    Not many people know this about me, but there are few things in life I hate more than beef and noodles. Add a cream sauce to that and I’m moments away from ripping out my own tongue with a spork. I don’t know what it is – maybe I had some sort of repressed traumatic childhood experience involving chipped beef – but the sight of beef Stroganoff alone makes my throat snap shut. And don’t get me started on the smell.
    Apparently this trauma showed on my face, because the flight attendant told me to hold on, and said that she’d check up front to see if they had any chicken left. I sat patiently and silently, praying that the front of the cabin was stocked with beef eaters.
    During my eternal wait, I did what anyone would do in similar circumstance – I made my neighbor extraordinarily uncomfortable by staring at his chicken and rice dinner. I followed his fork from plate to mouth with each bite. Just as I was about to ask him if he was going to eat all that zucchini, I was spared the indignity by the arrival of my very own lukewarm plate of chicken and rice.
    As I devoured my chicken and tried to avert my eyes from the woman in the aisle next to me eating the beef Stroganoff, I noticed a little slip of paper on my tray. I picked it up to investigate, and found that it was a prayer card, of sorts.
    It featured a mountainscape in varying shades of calming blue, and said:
    I will be glad and rejoice in you;
    I will sing praise to your name
    O most high.
    Psalm 9:2
    I thought perhaps some renegade nun was on board, slipping little messages into random dinners, until I noticed the Alaska Airlines logo on the bottom of the paper.
    Huh.
    So… what’s that all about? I distinctly recall requesting an aisle seat, bulkhead section, and no proselytizing on this flight. I began to get truly suspicious when I reached into the seatback and found a copy of The Watchtower.
    Maybe it’s because I’m not a churchgoer, but whenever I see little cards with religious sayings on them, I think of funerals. When I think of funerals, I think of dead people. When I think of dead people, I now think of Alaska Airlines. Is that really the marketing message they were hoping I would take home with me?

    Filed under: General on December 27th, 2004 | Comments Off

    Intervention

    My brother, upon finding me, his wife, and our mother in the kitchen drinking wine at 11:30 this morning:

    Brother: “Jeez – what a bunch of lushes. It’s not even noon yet!”

    Mom: “Yeah, I guess this doesn’t look good, does it?

    Me: “I’m not worried. I know I don’t have a drinking problem because I’m very controlled about it. Aside from the holidays, the only time I drink is when I’m alone or sad.”

    Filed under: General on December 26th, 2004 | Comments Off

    Anticipation Is Making Me Wait

    Ahhh, Seattle. Where to begin? I missed you all so much, that I’d like to relive my whirlwind tour of the Pacific Northwest by taking you along with me, step by step. From airport to hotel, hotel to client, client to hotel, hotel to airport, airport to airport, and airport to home. I just wish you hadn’t packed so much luggage. What, were you planning on moving to Washington?
    So let’s begin: okay, so I’m not really in Seattle yet. In fact, I’m nowhere near Seattle. I’m sitting at Gate L4 in O’Hare, killing time now that I’ve arrived two hours prior to departure, and exposing my nether regions to untold volumes of radiation seeping out of my laptop. That’s okay, odds are, I’m probably not going to be using these eggs anytime soon.
    I know I’m here really early. I can’t help it. There’s nothing I hate more than rushing to the airport, stressing out about possibly missing my flight. Well, I suppose there are a few things I hate more than that, like maybe irradiating my ovaries, or eating beef with noodles, but right now, my priorities are a bit skewed.
    In preparation for my trip to Mecca, I decide to test out an O’Hare Starbucks latté so I can compare it to a Seattle Starbucks latté once I arrive. I am expecting to have my mind thoroughly blown once I step off the plane in Seattle. Do they have Starbucks vending machines? That would really be something. I don’t think it will be too hard to top this one, since the barista-in-training first made my latté with caffeine instead of without, and then on his second attempt, he gave me whole milk instead of skim. I don’t really object to the whole milk, since I’m from Wisconsin, and therefore have the ability to drink milk straight out of a cow’s udder if I’m thirsty enough.
    Okay, I’ve never really seen a cow’s udder, but if someone dared me, I might drink some milk out of one. If it was squirted into a Black Russian. Come to think of it, isn’t there an actual drink that’s made with scotch and milk, or did I just make that up? I should know since Natasha and I took bartending classes together. But I’m getting a little off topic here. The point I’m trying to make is that all my research indicates that a latté should be 25-47% better in Seattle than in Chicago. And if it isn’t, you can believe I’ll be writing a letter to a certain CEO of a certain coffee company.
    While waiting at the gate, I witness a reunion of sorts, as a giggly young woman, about nineteen years old, recognizes the woman standing by the gate as a former classmate of her older sister.
    “Oh my god! Didn’t you go to school with my sister Rhonda? Ha ha ha! What are you doing here? Ha ha ha!”
    The woman looked a little uncomfortable with this display of unbridled giggling, wiped the corners of her mouth with her hand, and said, “Yes, I remember Rhonda.”
    And, although she was dressed in an Alaska Airlines uniform, the woman felt compelled to answer the giggly girl’s question, so she gestured to her outfit, raised her eyebrows, and said, “I work here.”
    “Oh – so are you a stewardess? Ha ha ha.”
    The woman adjusted the strap on her briefcase, smiled and said, “They don’t call us ‘stewardesses’ anymore.”
    “Ha ha ha! What do they call you?”

    “Flight attendants.”
    “Oh. Ha ha ha!”
    Later I glanced over and saw the young girl enthusiastically teaching the flight attendant how to crochet. The giggly girl is actually quite sweet.
    A dapper man in a grey fedora was standing near the garbage can, looking around suspiciously. He pulled something out of his bag, looked around again, and kneeled down by the garbage can. As I looked up, I noticed that he had slapped a giant sticker advertising some website onto the garbage can. I took note of the URL and will look it up later.
    In preparation for my long trip, I walk over by the bathrooms and plug my laptop into the only available outlet in all of O’Hare. A woman with short black hair and an iPod starts pacing in front me, looks nervously at her watch, and asks me if I’m going to be using the outlet for very long.
    I told her that my laptop battery was down to 18%, and I was about to go on a four-hour flight, so I kind of needed to charge up. I felt slightly guilty about my non-charitable response, particularly since my laptop was actually at 32%, but what’s more important – writing blogs, or listening to U2? I don’t think there’s much debate there.
    The man standing behind the counter at the gate grabs the microphone and announces that our flight will be delayed approximately one hour, due to weather problems. His eyes glance to the left as he says this, so I am certain that this is a lie, but have no choice but to begrudgingly accept his deception.
    Once my laptop is charged up, I wonder if the giggly girl would teach me how to crochet?

    Filed under: General on December 22nd, 2004 | Comments Off

    Shop Til You Drop

    I have never really considered myself much of a risk-taker. Sure, I’ll abandon the occasional job without another one lined up during the worst recession my generation has ever seen, and once I bought and ate a cheesesteak from a guy standing on the side of the road, but for the most part, I like to play it safe. I always wear my seatbelt, avoid standing near trees during a thunderstorm, and never mix ammonia with bleach. So that’s why I still can’t figure out what daredevil spirit possessed me this weekend when I decided to do something that nearly cost me my life:
    I went to a Toys ‘R Us at 11:00am on the last shopping weekend before Christmas. By myself.
    I am a horrible procrastinator when it comes to holiday shopping, so I pretty much had to complete 90% of my shopping this weekend.
    Since the list of presents for my nephews didn’t seem too intimidating, I wasn’t overly concerned:

    1. Adam – Army guys and Lego’s
    2. Elliott – Yu Gi Oh! and science stuff
    I’m going to a Toys ‘R Us, for crying out loud – how hard can it be to find these items? Oh, silly little Jenny. Was I ever really that naïve?
    First stop, army stuff. Adam likes battleships and army guys, so I headed straight for the G.I. Joe section. To my right were the little G.I. Joe action figures – they were all displayed in nicely sealed two-packs: one good guy and one bad guy in each. I grabbed the first one I saw – G.I. Joe vs. Venom – and although it looked pretty cool, I suddenly noticed the pack that was hiding behind the first one I grabbed. Wait! That one seemed even cooler because the one guy had a mask, and the other guy had a saber. Stop the press! The one underneath that one was better yet because the one guy had a grenade launcher and the other guy had antennas. Hold the phone…
    Overwhelmed by the options, I threw all of the little G.I. Joe’s to the side and looked to my left, where all the big G.I. Joe’s resided. The first one I grabbed was the talking G.I. Joe. Let me tell you – the times, they are a changing. When I was a kid, talking dolls had a string in their back that you pulled, and a few different mechanical phrases came oozing out of some holes in their stomach. Eventually, the string snapped and you were left with a mute doll that looked like it had been blasted in the belly with a sawed off shotgun.
    Now, the latest Talking G.I. Joe actually has a mouth that moves when you press his chest. I know what you’re all saying – “That sounds so cool!” Hold on to that thought for a minute, because you may reconsider. Here’s the thing – when you press Joe’s chest, his mouth actually opens, and he utters one word. Then you press his chest again and his mouth opens, and he utters one more word. Repeat this process three more times and you have just heard the creepiest sentence ever spoken.
    Joe’s dead blue eyes stare through you as his cavernous mouth gapes open, and he says:
    “We.”
    [press again – demon mouth opens]
    “Must.”
    [press again – demon mouth opens]

    “Defeat.”
    [press again – demon mouth opens]

    “Venom.”

    [press again – demon mouth opens]

    “Now.”

    I was thoroughly traumatized by this evil G.I. Joe, and vowed never to inflict his terror upon my nephews. I let my mom buy it for them instead.
    I decided to hold off on the army guys, and look for some of the educational toys that Elliott had requested. He’s a boy genius, so he asked for some LeapPad Magic School Bus Does Trigonometry thing. When I asked for some assistance, a poorly paid and under-enthused stock boy grunted in the general direction of the Imaginarium Station, which is where all the smart toys are located.
    I’m not sure if it’s intentionally designed this way, perhaps so that you can never escape, but the Imaginarium Station is laid out much like the hedge maze in The Shining. I walked down one corridor and found all the overpriced LeadPad books. Then a left turn took me to the science section, littered with telescopes and Sea Monkeys. Another left turn and I wound up near the Dora the Explorer Vocabulary Builder section. A quick right led me straight into LegoLand, which is directly in front of Cheap Lego Knock-Off Land.
    Wait – did my brother say Elliott likes astronomy or geology? Does he like bugs, or was that last year? Are Pokémon and Hi Hi Puffy Amiyumi the same thing?
    With each wrong turn, I started to feel my body temperature rise, partly because I still had on my huge winter coat and a turtleneck sweater. A steady trickle of sweat began to drip down my back, as my breathing became more and more shallow.
    Over the loudspeakers blared the shrill voices of children singing on the Nickelodeon Christmas Album, interrupted only by the squawking commands of Toys ‘R Us cashiers looking for price checks and stockboys.
    “Christmas, Christmas time is here. Time for joy and time for chee- ANGELA PLEASE REPORT TO THE CUSTOMER SERVICE DESK IMMEDIATELY. ANGELA TO THE CUSTOMER SERVICE DESK -I still want a hula hoop!”

    My vision started to dim, and my mouth got very dry, so I knew I needed to get some fresh air quickly. I turned left to exit the Imaginarium Labyrinth and ran head on into a woman and her four children arguing over which Lego set to buy. When I spun around to avoid them, I was trapped by three people waiting in line to do price checks at the self scanner.
    As I struggled to squeeze my body between an overloaded shopping cart and a Lincoln Log display, I felt my arms go limp and my knees start to buckle. My last words before hitting the ground were, “Yu Gi Ohhhhhh…”
    I’m not sure how long I was out, but when I woke up, all I could make out was something red and furry chuckling and moving toward me. I rubbed my eyes and said, “Santa? Is that you? I… I’ve been good this year. Did you get my letter?”
    When I wiped the drool off my cheek and put my glasses back on, I saw that it wasn’t Santa moving toward me, but a sale bin of Hokey Pokey Elmos that I must have set off on my way down.
    I brushed myself off and stumbled toward the nearest exit, revived by the blast of wintry air that met me. Once I made it back home, I did what I should’ve done all along – stayed inside the confines of my home and purchased all my gifts online. Clearly, if the good lord had intended me to interact with live human beings, he wouldn’t have given me DSL and a secure Visa card.

    Filed under: General on December 20th, 2004 | Comments Off

    « Previous Page — Next Page »