Today marks my truimphant return to the ever shifting non-space that is the blogsphere. I’m relieved to be back and doing what I love while remaining (mostly) unchained.
My latest adventure started (as so many of them do) with a phone call from the nine year old instigator in my life.
The Instigator: Dad, I need underwear. White ones. For the Play.
Me: No problem. We can grab some later.
The Instigator: Nooooo, Daaaaaaaaad, I need them for today.
Me: Ok. I’ll swing by and grab you and we can pick some up.
The Instigator:Nooooo, Daaaaaaad, there won’t be time for you to come all the way here. Please just grab some and bring them over.
So, that’s how I find myself sitting in the parking lot of the local Target, not grasping the enormity of the task I was undertaking. I stroll into the store and am immediately faced with a choice, handbasket or cart, because there is no chance that I’m about to walk through Target with a child’s underwear balled up in my hand. The cart is too big for such a tiny purchase so I scoop up a red handbasket and make a bee line for the female undergarments.
In a perfect world, I would walk right in spot exactly what I need and get out to my truck with both my schedule and dignity intact. It’s a well-established fact that I don’t live in that world.
Have you ever seen a nature show? You know the kind where a group of gazelles is lounging around the watering hole when suddenly their bodies tense, necks and ears at attention, wild black eyes scanning the horizon for the predator whose scent was carried on the wind. That’s exactly what it’s like when a single, middle aged man in a voltron tshirt approachs that section of a department store. In my head, I charge in like a Roman scattering them with my mighty, red handbasket and shouts of “Vae Victus”.
In the real world, I panic and veer a hard right toward the comfort of the cheap furniture, video games and toys. A plan quickly comes together. I’ll peruse through a few other departments and pick up a few other items. This way it will seem like I’m shopping for a list and just fullfilling orders. So I swing through and grab six or seven things I need and head back to the watering hole.
A break in the foot traffic gives me the opportunity to infiltrate the perimeter unnoticed. However, finding a single size of white, girl’s panties is something akin to searching for the Lost Ark of the Covenant. Even if I’m able to find them, there is a good chance my face is going to melt off in the process. Women’s underwear, I’ve come to learn, is divided into two sections. The first section is the individual pairs, which cost about twenty dollars a piece and are held in these giant bins where the shopper must pick through them individually to find the correct size, shape, color combination. There is ZERO chance that I’m about to do that. So I head for the second sections, the prepackaged Wall of Panties. I’ve been less overwhelmed at the summit of mountains than I was at the giant pastel colored wall of confusion.
After five or six walk-by passes (the women are starting to eyeball me and whisper so I’m scared to stare at one section for too long), I find the required size and scooby-doo my ass straight to the nearest register. Somehow I manage to unload my basket on the conveyor without injuring myself and even give a wink at the cutie running the register. She smiles back, makes a little small talk and begins scanning my items. After the first few though, her smile reversed and twisted and an anti-social wall rose up between us. I was unsure of what had happened until I was back in the parking lot and scanning over my receipt. The following items were listed, forever securing my place in the creep hall of fame.
- panties white girls
- baby powder
- twin pack razors
- vasoline
- tweezers
- 100 yards of twine
- roll of duct tape
Welcome back to my world, folks.