CHAPTER FOUR
BABY’S FIRST PHOTOGRAPH
Six months had passed. Winter had given way to the broiling Carolina summertime. Zander had grown from a paltry five pounds to a Buddha-like twenty five.
He was so big and so rolly polly that when he sat on his haunches in the grass, Oriental people stopped beside him to pray toward the East. A local Chinese restaurant wanted to use his likeness on their menu. The World Sumu Federation had heard about this wunderkind of fat and put him on their recruitment list while sending us boxes of wheat germ. Go figure.
Underneath layers of baby fat, you could see the handsome outline of a young boy’s face. I felt Zander was a little heavy for his age. The doctor said he was in the ninety percentile for weight, and the fiftieth for height. If you think about it, those are the proportions of an anvil. If he were a heavyweight fighter, he’d have been George Foreman jabbing with one glove and inhaling a pork chop with the other. Dana discounted the rapid weight gain as nothing more than a little baby fat. I of course attribute it to a mother supplying her son with a constant supply of curdling, rich breast milk which the boy slurped down like an Orca devouring sardines. That, coupled with a young life filled with stagnation, did not present a lot of opportunity for burning calories.
On this particular Saturday morning, we were attempting to record the boy’s massive image with that all American of traditions, the baby portrait.
Zander looked adorable in his blue and white sailor suit. His eyes were glowing a fluorescent blue that matched the brilliant neckerchief of his outfit. A ubiquitous trail of drool clung to his toothless, lower lip. His hair, light and bouncy, danced on the hot, humid breeze as we made our way across the K-Mart parking lot.
We reached the sliding glass doors of this mammoth shopping emporium, and proceeded within. The automatic portal whooshed open as a vacuum of hot, stagnant air rushed into the store with us. At the same moment, an air conditioned breeze bolted outward into the melting sunshine. The resulting clash of air currents and temperature disparity turned the portal into an electrified gush of wind as super charged molecules collided across our skin.
“Welcome K-Mart shoppers,” the loud speaker blared. “Don’t forget to check out the red tag sale on Pampers in aisle thirteen.” The voice was soft and soothing, like warm bath water slowly covering your naked torso.
“The way this kid fouls a diaper, we’d better check out aisle thirteen before we leave,” I said jokingly.
The voice from above was quickly replaced by soothing elevator music designed to heighten the shopping experience. As I carried Zander past the checkout counters, I winced as the thunderous guitar licks of Led Zeppelin were transmuted into some emasculating, eighty piece orchestral sleeping pill. It was a heinous, sacrilegious assault on musical greatness. It was a major belch in the stomach of corporate mass marketing where the past is ransacked and then used like a smart bomb in the war of retail blood sucking.
As we trudged past a myriad of brightly colored displays, I covered Zander’s ears as a nauseating sickness pervaded my gurgling stomach.
“Don’t listen to this crap, son. When we get home, I’ll knock your diapers off with a little Kashmir from Physical Graffitti”
“Leave the boy alone, AC,” Dana, smirked. “You act younger than him sometimes.”
“Yeah, but they’re soiling a classic!”
She didn’t want to hear it as she shook her head as we turned a corner past hunting equipment.
I tried to change the topic. “Where are they hiding this photographic lunacy?” “I’m not sure,” Dana replied looking around.
Just then, the music crackled into a muted hum. A man’s voice came over the intercom. “Customer service emergency, aisle three. Baby Vomit!” The voice was gone. I looked at Dana who was grinning widely.
“Aisle three. That’s the place,” I said laughingly.
We made our way down the massive corridor, looking down each numbered aisle as we marched ahead.
Aisle ten, pots and pans. Aisle nine, lamps. Aisle eight, laxatives. Through the easy listening distortion around me, I could still make out the subliminal messages infiltrating my subconscious from the hidden sound speakers above.
“The new K-Mart lawn tractor. State of the art lawn care for just thirty five simple installments of one hundred and two dollars each. Make your lawn a K-Mart lawn,” the latent message implored.
I looked as Zander rolled his eyes at me. He was smiling and playing peak a boo in my shoulder. He seemed to like K-Mart, and its rainbow assortment of strategically placed merchandise and Beethoven enhanced Led Zeppelin.
Aisle five, extension cords. Aisle four, plywood furniture. Then I heard the cacophony of piercing, primal screams drifting over a stack of wooden picnic tables deep within aisle three. A look of realization crossed Dana’s face as we both knew that we had found the much sought after K-Mart photo lady.
Sixty shots of varying size for $13.99. It’s a deal that’s hard to pass up for any first time parent, and it looked like every first time parent in town was in line with their genetic offspring that Saturday morning.
Babies of every conceivable size, shape and color were there ahead of us, waiting to be immortalized in a five by eight glossy picture. The air was hot with anticipation as large sweaty southern women spoke to their ‘youngins’ in an unintelligible array of sheered off consonants and vowels. Proper diction was rendered inert, as useless as paper plates in a heavy rain.
We immediately took our place in line. We were number seven. A fine number I thought to myself as we settled in for what we anticipated would be a short wait. I held Zander proudly as his smile beamed across aisle three like a light house beacon warning other ships of the ominous jagged coastline ahead. I scrutinized the other children. They were obviously conceived from inferior breeding stock, I thought to myself. The child ahead of us looked like a small primate as he sucked on a hair ball he had found wedged under a display rack. The little girl in front of him was dressed hideously in a multicolored phosphorescent smock. She looked like a baby clown that should have been smoking a cigar and climbing out of a midget car. I looked at Zander and smiled. He cooed loudly and defiantly. You can do that sort of thing when you are the boy king.
“Next!,” the photo lady shouted.
Her strident voice limped into the air in a puff of stale cigarette smoke. She was dressed in black and wobbled from side to side like a sea lion with a trick hip. Her scraggly hair had steaks of blue in it like a Brillo pad before it’s been moistened. Like an overweight garage mechanic she tinkered with the camera and lights, while positioning the child on the phony Astroturf platform before her.
Then, right before she snapped the picture, a phony smile spread across her face.
“Smile for me, baby. Come on little fella, big smile for Gertrude.”
She waited, pulling the smile from the child’s lips like a card shark pulls an ace from his sleeve.
Just then, a massive aluminum beach umbrella exploded into a flash of light. I imagined the nuclear radiation being generated by that sonic blast. I looked at the troll faced baby on the platform wondering how many rads it takes to internally broil the liver of an eight month old.
My attention on the photographic proceedings was broken by a message piping in overhead. “Attention K-Mart shoppers. There’s a red tag special on plant fertilizer in the garden department. Make your garden a K-Mart garden.” The voice was gone, replaced by a trumpet solo of the Beatles’ Lucy in the sky with diamonds. That nauseating feeling once again permeated my stomach.
I looked at one Southern woman standing nearby. She was oily and wearing green spandex pants and matching tee shirt. It was the kind of neon phosphorescent green thread that the air force uses to find lost pilots at sea. To say the least, her ensemble was more than a little overpowering.
“Which aisle are the sunglasses in?,” I asked Dana.
“Behave!,” she said promptly.
Behave, I thought to myself. Why behave when there’s big time wrestling so close at hand.
I hoisted Zander over my head and spun him around like a whirling dervish.
I was the Iron Sheik and he was the “Baby” Junk Yard Dog. As I spun around wildly, the products lining the shelves converged into one circular blur of energized color. I listened to the whir of rushing wind race past my ears. The Beatles became a distorted, chaotic melody. It sounded like rap master Satan was in the K-Mart audio booth spinning a vinyl disc backward while screaming for everyone to buy lots of pea soup.
I looked at Baby Z as he floated above me. He was smiling and cocking his head oddly as the G forces twisted his pristine cheeks into a quivering mass of drooling flesh. The incandescent lights above us spun wildly. Blood was rushing to my head in a torrential down pour. Z man was cooing wildly as we spun through the aisle like a washing machine gone amuck.
“AAAA CCCCCC! Stoppppppp Itttttttt.” The voice was eerily slow as it echoed into our whirling world. I looked up at Zander. As I did, a large gush of drool plastered across the bridge of my nose. I stopped the ride. I gripped my toes into the floor trying not to crash suddenly, awkwardly into a display rack of radiator hoses.
“AC Stop it. You’re going to make him sick.” The voice was suddenly recognizable. It was Dana glaring at me with a motherly tone that demanded respect.
“You’ll get him dirty for his picture,” She said. Dirty, I thought to myself. On what?, K-Mart air? There wasn’t time to retort. Other mothers stood behind her in a concrete veil of solidarity. I felt outnumbered. Overwhelmed! I was after all the only man in line. That should have told me something right there. The other men had left their wives and children in a cowardly heap as they ran for the safety of the automotive department. I on the other hand had stayed by my families side. I was prepared to endure the baby picture experience at all costs. These other women didn’t care about this. They were venting their own marital frustrations at me. Screw them!
“We’re going on a journey,” I said turning my back on the angry mob of estrogen crazed women.
Again, I tossed Zander over my head and started the airplane noise he enjoyed so much before. “Brrrrrrrrroooooooohhhhmmmm!” His exuberant giggle only inspired me to launch him to greater heights as we raced down the aisle. Past the picture frames, past the auto fresheners. Zander was laughing like a gyroscope out of control. It was music to a dad’s ears. We hung a left near the electrical cords and headed into the toy department. Zander’s eyes grew as big as saucers as we maneuvered past Playskool and Fisher Price play sets.
Suddenly, I wanted to sit him down on the cold linoleum and roll balls to him. I spotted a Nerf base ball set. What would happen if I batted balls to him in aisle twenty two. He’s just an infant, I thought to myself. You have to give him a few more months before you throw baseballs, and footballs at him. The urge to play sports with my son was a strong one. What if he was a natural? Maybe he would gobble up grounders and suck in spirals like an old pro. How would I know unless I tried? I was tempted to rip open cardboard boxes and find out. Suddenly an image of Dana exploded into the visual cortex of my mind. It was yelling at me, admonishing me to treat the boy like a baby and not an ex jock. Her image was powerful and compelling.
We continued our flight through a blur of toys and bikes and sporting goods. He was smiling effusively, flying effortlessly through a child’s most intense fantasy. Other children, seven and eight years of age stopped to look at Zander in Awe. They were below us, everywhere, playing with games and toys, on the shimmering linoleum. Like GI Joe prancing through a field of land mines, I maneuvered myself expeditiously through the stares of these coveting youngsters. Like so many homeless midgets, these children appeared to be fatherless, left alone in the toy department to entertain themselves. And here before them was a gargantuan dad, loud and forceful, throwing caution and his tiny delicate son to the wind. I could feel their emptiness as they stared at us with their sad puppy dog eyes. Zander giggled like a mad man as we pressed on. We left the confines of toys and games and once again entered the world of household items. His thin hair was pasted against his scalp as a current of K-Mart air rushed around his head.
We orbited the store returning to the crowd of women and children waiting in line. As we moved closer to Dana, I noticed a house thermometer hanging on a rack. Eighty one degrees. No wonder I was sweating, I thought to myself. I pulled up next to Dana. She was frothing at the mouth standing in a stagnant cesspool of baby drool. It was a K-Mart law suit waiting to happen. Children were wailing furiously, incessantly. A phalanx of mothers rocked and swayed back and forth trying to appease them.
Over this rumbling of noise and dissatisfaction was photo lady’s voice. “Smile for the birdie,” she said in a gruff tone through clenched, smoke stained teeth.
“Are we next?,” I asked innocently.
It was as if I had pulled off Zander’s dirty diaper and wiped it on the walls. Women around me stared at me with brazen anger in their eyes. They waited for Dana to fill me in.
“No,” she said testily. “The line hasn’t moved at all. This woman doesn’t know what she’s doing.”
As if scripted to join the fray, an oval faced woman suddenly pushed her way into my shopping space.
“I was here for two hours yesterday,” she lamented in a southern drawl so thick that she could have been from Indonesia.
I tried to look at her like I cared even a little bit. That prompted her to continue.
“The regular man quit on us. They gave us a discounted coupon for today. This woman drove here all the way from Raleigh. Can you believe this?”
“What’s the hold up today?,” I asked.
“She’s posing all these other children in five and six different poses. First the cowboy hat, then the balloons. It’s too much. doesn’t she realize we’re back here waiting?”
Obviously not, I thought to myself, as I looked up at the photo lady. She looked disorganized and uninterested. She was sloth like and generally repulsive. I imagined her terrible life as that of a recovering alcoholic, living in a one bedroom, cockroach infested apartment.
Globs of sweat were rolling down her hairy cheeks. She was struggling to maintain her sanity as she posed one spoiled brat after another on the raised platform. I almost felt a sprinkling of compassion for her. Who the hell would want a job photographing other people’s children all day long? Screaming. Crying. Tantrums. Smelly diapers. I felt a sudden urge to walk up there in her behalf and kick the nearest mother I could find squarely in the ass. I chuckled to myself as I imagined capturing this classic freeze frame with her big box camera. Now that pose would be worth thirteen dollars I thought to myself.
My thoughts were interrupted by Dana’s impatient voice. “AC, this sucks. I’m hot. I’m sweating. My back hurts from standing here. Even Zander’s worn out.”
I looked down at Z man. His eyes were securely shut. He was snoring discernibly over the background announcement of another incredible K-Mart shopping opportunity.
Dana continued. “It’s already been an hour, and this line hasn’t moved hardly at all. Now, he’s asleep. If we do have to wake him up, if we ever get there, he’s just going to be cranky.”
“Do you wanna go?,” I said quietly. I felt the anticipation of those in line behind us begin to swell. Like sharks circling a bloody carcass, they waited to see if they would move ahead in line.
Dana responded affirmatively with a simple nod of her head. With little fan fare we surrendered our space in line. The others behind us quickly shuffled forward closing the gap. We moved towards the front doors with an anger in our step. From over head another message blared out. “Welcome K-Mart shoppers, to a whole new kind of store.”
I turned to Dana and laughed out loud. “Screw K-Mart!,” I said as we brushed past a group of meandering salesman sky blue vests. Dana snickered loudly. We were angry parental units who had waited in line for more than ninety minutes. Now we were going home empty handed. The glass doors whooshed open. A broiling noxious wind assaulted our senses as we made our way into the hazy afternoon.
BABY’S FIRST PHOTOGRAPH
Six months had passed. Winter had given way to the broiling Carolina summertime. Zander had grown from a paltry five pounds to a Buddha-like twenty five.
He was so big and so rolly polly that when he sat on his haunches in the grass, Oriental people stopped beside him to pray toward the East. A local Chinese restaurant wanted to use his likeness on their menu. The World Sumu Federation had heard about this wunderkind of fat and put him on their recruitment list while sending us boxes of wheat germ. Go figure.
Underneath layers of baby fat, you could see the handsome outline of a young boy’s face. I felt Zander was a little heavy for his age. The doctor said he was in the ninety percentile for weight, and the fiftieth for height. If you think about it, those are the proportions of an anvil. If he were a heavyweight fighter, he’d have been George Foreman jabbing with one glove and inhaling a pork chop with the other. Dana discounted the rapid weight gain as nothing more than a little baby fat. I of course attribute it to a mother supplying her son with a constant supply of curdling, rich breast milk which the boy slurped down like an Orca devouring sardines. That, coupled with a young life filled with stagnation, did not present a lot of opportunity for burning calories.
On this particular Saturday morning, we were attempting to record the boy’s massive image with that all American of traditions, the baby portrait.
Zander looked adorable in his blue and white sailor suit. His eyes were glowing a fluorescent blue that matched the brilliant neckerchief of his outfit. A ubiquitous trail of drool clung to his toothless, lower lip. His hair, light and bouncy, danced on the hot, humid breeze as we made our way across the K-Mart parking lot.
We reached the sliding glass doors of this mammoth shopping emporium, and proceeded within. The automatic portal whooshed open as a vacuum of hot, stagnant air rushed into the store with us. At the same moment, an air conditioned breeze bolted outward into the melting sunshine. The resulting clash of air currents and temperature disparity turned the portal into an electrified gush of wind as super charged molecules collided across our skin.
“Welcome K-Mart shoppers,” the loud speaker blared. “Don’t forget to check out the red tag sale on Pampers in aisle thirteen.” The voice was soft and soothing, like warm bath water slowly covering your naked torso.
“The way this kid fouls a diaper, we’d better check out aisle thirteen before we leave,” I said jokingly.
The voice from above was quickly replaced by soothing elevator music designed to heighten the shopping experience. As I carried Zander past the checkout counters, I winced as the thunderous guitar licks of Led Zeppelin were transmuted into some emasculating, eighty piece orchestral sleeping pill. It was a heinous, sacrilegious assault on musical greatness. It was a major belch in the stomach of corporate mass marketing where the past is ransacked and then used like a smart bomb in the war of retail blood sucking.
As we trudged past a myriad of brightly colored displays, I covered Zander’s ears as a nauseating sickness pervaded my gurgling stomach.
“Don’t listen to this crap, son. When we get home, I’ll knock your diapers off with a little Kashmir from Physical Graffitti”
“Leave the boy alone, AC,” Dana, smirked. “You act younger than him sometimes.”
“Yeah, but they’re soiling a classic!”
She didn’t want to hear it as she shook her head as we turned a corner past hunting equipment.
I tried to change the topic. “Where are they hiding this photographic lunacy?” “I’m not sure,” Dana replied looking around.
Just then, the music crackled into a muted hum. A man’s voice came over the intercom. “Customer service emergency, aisle three. Baby Vomit!” The voice was gone. I looked at Dana who was grinning widely.
“Aisle three. That’s the place,” I said laughingly.
We made our way down the massive corridor, looking down each numbered aisle as we marched ahead.
Aisle ten, pots and pans. Aisle nine, lamps. Aisle eight, laxatives. Through the easy listening distortion around me, I could still make out the subliminal messages infiltrating my subconscious from the hidden sound speakers above.
“The new K-Mart lawn tractor. State of the art lawn care for just thirty five simple installments of one hundred and two dollars each. Make your lawn a K-Mart lawn,” the latent message implored.
I looked as Zander rolled his eyes at me. He was smiling and playing peak a boo in my shoulder. He seemed to like K-Mart, and its rainbow assortment of strategically placed merchandise and Beethoven enhanced Led Zeppelin.
Aisle five, extension cords. Aisle four, plywood furniture. Then I heard the cacophony of piercing, primal screams drifting over a stack of wooden picnic tables deep within aisle three. A look of realization crossed Dana’s face as we both knew that we had found the much sought after K-Mart photo lady.
Sixty shots of varying size for $13.99. It’s a deal that’s hard to pass up for any first time parent, and it looked like every first time parent in town was in line with their genetic offspring that Saturday morning.
Babies of every conceivable size, shape and color were there ahead of us, waiting to be immortalized in a five by eight glossy picture. The air was hot with anticipation as large sweaty southern women spoke to their ‘youngins’ in an unintelligible array of sheered off consonants and vowels. Proper diction was rendered inert, as useless as paper plates in a heavy rain.
We immediately took our place in line. We were number seven. A fine number I thought to myself as we settled in for what we anticipated would be a short wait. I held Zander proudly as his smile beamed across aisle three like a light house beacon warning other ships of the ominous jagged coastline ahead. I scrutinized the other children. They were obviously conceived from inferior breeding stock, I thought to myself. The child ahead of us looked like a small primate as he sucked on a hair ball he had found wedged under a display rack. The little girl in front of him was dressed hideously in a multicolored phosphorescent smock. She looked like a baby clown that should have been smoking a cigar and climbing out of a midget car. I looked at Zander and smiled. He cooed loudly and defiantly. You can do that sort of thing when you are the boy king.
“Next!,” the photo lady shouted.
Her strident voice limped into the air in a puff of stale cigarette smoke. She was dressed in black and wobbled from side to side like a sea lion with a trick hip. Her scraggly hair had steaks of blue in it like a Brillo pad before it’s been moistened. Like an overweight garage mechanic she tinkered with the camera and lights, while positioning the child on the phony Astroturf platform before her.
Then, right before she snapped the picture, a phony smile spread across her face.
“Smile for me, baby. Come on little fella, big smile for Gertrude.”
She waited, pulling the smile from the child’s lips like a card shark pulls an ace from his sleeve.
Just then, a massive aluminum beach umbrella exploded into a flash of light. I imagined the nuclear radiation being generated by that sonic blast. I looked at the troll faced baby on the platform wondering how many rads it takes to internally broil the liver of an eight month old.
My attention on the photographic proceedings was broken by a message piping in overhead. “Attention K-Mart shoppers. There’s a red tag special on plant fertilizer in the garden department. Make your garden a K-Mart garden.” The voice was gone, replaced by a trumpet solo of the Beatles’ Lucy in the sky with diamonds. That nauseating feeling once again permeated my stomach.
I looked at one Southern woman standing nearby. She was oily and wearing green spandex pants and matching tee shirt. It was the kind of neon phosphorescent green thread that the air force uses to find lost pilots at sea. To say the least, her ensemble was more than a little overpowering.
“Which aisle are the sunglasses in?,” I asked Dana.
“Behave!,” she said promptly.
Behave, I thought to myself. Why behave when there’s big time wrestling so close at hand.
I hoisted Zander over my head and spun him around like a whirling dervish.
I was the Iron Sheik and he was the “Baby” Junk Yard Dog. As I spun around wildly, the products lining the shelves converged into one circular blur of energized color. I listened to the whir of rushing wind race past my ears. The Beatles became a distorted, chaotic melody. It sounded like rap master Satan was in the K-Mart audio booth spinning a vinyl disc backward while screaming for everyone to buy lots of pea soup.
I looked at Baby Z as he floated above me. He was smiling and cocking his head oddly as the G forces twisted his pristine cheeks into a quivering mass of drooling flesh. The incandescent lights above us spun wildly. Blood was rushing to my head in a torrential down pour. Z man was cooing wildly as we spun through the aisle like a washing machine gone amuck.
“AAAA CCCCCC! Stoppppppp Itttttttt.” The voice was eerily slow as it echoed into our whirling world. I looked up at Zander. As I did, a large gush of drool plastered across the bridge of my nose. I stopped the ride. I gripped my toes into the floor trying not to crash suddenly, awkwardly into a display rack of radiator hoses.
“AC Stop it. You’re going to make him sick.” The voice was suddenly recognizable. It was Dana glaring at me with a motherly tone that demanded respect.
“You’ll get him dirty for his picture,” She said. Dirty, I thought to myself. On what?, K-Mart air? There wasn’t time to retort. Other mothers stood behind her in a concrete veil of solidarity. I felt outnumbered. Overwhelmed! I was after all the only man in line. That should have told me something right there. The other men had left their wives and children in a cowardly heap as they ran for the safety of the automotive department. I on the other hand had stayed by my families side. I was prepared to endure the baby picture experience at all costs. These other women didn’t care about this. They were venting their own marital frustrations at me. Screw them!
“We’re going on a journey,” I said turning my back on the angry mob of estrogen crazed women.
Again, I tossed Zander over my head and started the airplane noise he enjoyed so much before. “Brrrrrrrrroooooooohhhhmmmm!” His exuberant giggle only inspired me to launch him to greater heights as we raced down the aisle. Past the picture frames, past the auto fresheners. Zander was laughing like a gyroscope out of control. It was music to a dad’s ears. We hung a left near the electrical cords and headed into the toy department. Zander’s eyes grew as big as saucers as we maneuvered past Playskool and Fisher Price play sets.
Suddenly, I wanted to sit him down on the cold linoleum and roll balls to him. I spotted a Nerf base ball set. What would happen if I batted balls to him in aisle twenty two. He’s just an infant, I thought to myself. You have to give him a few more months before you throw baseballs, and footballs at him. The urge to play sports with my son was a strong one. What if he was a natural? Maybe he would gobble up grounders and suck in spirals like an old pro. How would I know unless I tried? I was tempted to rip open cardboard boxes and find out. Suddenly an image of Dana exploded into the visual cortex of my mind. It was yelling at me, admonishing me to treat the boy like a baby and not an ex jock. Her image was powerful and compelling.
We continued our flight through a blur of toys and bikes and sporting goods. He was smiling effusively, flying effortlessly through a child’s most intense fantasy. Other children, seven and eight years of age stopped to look at Zander in Awe. They were below us, everywhere, playing with games and toys, on the shimmering linoleum. Like GI Joe prancing through a field of land mines, I maneuvered myself expeditiously through the stares of these coveting youngsters. Like so many homeless midgets, these children appeared to be fatherless, left alone in the toy department to entertain themselves. And here before them was a gargantuan dad, loud and forceful, throwing caution and his tiny delicate son to the wind. I could feel their emptiness as they stared at us with their sad puppy dog eyes. Zander giggled like a mad man as we pressed on. We left the confines of toys and games and once again entered the world of household items. His thin hair was pasted against his scalp as a current of K-Mart air rushed around his head.
We orbited the store returning to the crowd of women and children waiting in line. As we moved closer to Dana, I noticed a house thermometer hanging on a rack. Eighty one degrees. No wonder I was sweating, I thought to myself. I pulled up next to Dana. She was frothing at the mouth standing in a stagnant cesspool of baby drool. It was a K-Mart law suit waiting to happen. Children were wailing furiously, incessantly. A phalanx of mothers rocked and swayed back and forth trying to appease them.
Over this rumbling of noise and dissatisfaction was photo lady’s voice. “Smile for the birdie,” she said in a gruff tone through clenched, smoke stained teeth.
“Are we next?,” I asked innocently.
It was as if I had pulled off Zander’s dirty diaper and wiped it on the walls. Women around me stared at me with brazen anger in their eyes. They waited for Dana to fill me in.
“No,” she said testily. “The line hasn’t moved at all. This woman doesn’t know what she’s doing.”
As if scripted to join the fray, an oval faced woman suddenly pushed her way into my shopping space.
“I was here for two hours yesterday,” she lamented in a southern drawl so thick that she could have been from Indonesia.
I tried to look at her like I cared even a little bit. That prompted her to continue.
“The regular man quit on us. They gave us a discounted coupon for today. This woman drove here all the way from Raleigh. Can you believe this?”
“What’s the hold up today?,” I asked.
“She’s posing all these other children in five and six different poses. First the cowboy hat, then the balloons. It’s too much. doesn’t she realize we’re back here waiting?”
Obviously not, I thought to myself, as I looked up at the photo lady. She looked disorganized and uninterested. She was sloth like and generally repulsive. I imagined her terrible life as that of a recovering alcoholic, living in a one bedroom, cockroach infested apartment.
Globs of sweat were rolling down her hairy cheeks. She was struggling to maintain her sanity as she posed one spoiled brat after another on the raised platform. I almost felt a sprinkling of compassion for her. Who the hell would want a job photographing other people’s children all day long? Screaming. Crying. Tantrums. Smelly diapers. I felt a sudden urge to walk up there in her behalf and kick the nearest mother I could find squarely in the ass. I chuckled to myself as I imagined capturing this classic freeze frame with her big box camera. Now that pose would be worth thirteen dollars I thought to myself.
My thoughts were interrupted by Dana’s impatient voice. “AC, this sucks. I’m hot. I’m sweating. My back hurts from standing here. Even Zander’s worn out.”
I looked down at Z man. His eyes were securely shut. He was snoring discernibly over the background announcement of another incredible K-Mart shopping opportunity.
Dana continued. “It’s already been an hour, and this line hasn’t moved hardly at all. Now, he’s asleep. If we do have to wake him up, if we ever get there, he’s just going to be cranky.”
“Do you wanna go?,” I said quietly. I felt the anticipation of those in line behind us begin to swell. Like sharks circling a bloody carcass, they waited to see if they would move ahead in line.
Dana responded affirmatively with a simple nod of her head. With little fan fare we surrendered our space in line. The others behind us quickly shuffled forward closing the gap. We moved towards the front doors with an anger in our step. From over head another message blared out. “Welcome K-Mart shoppers, to a whole new kind of store.”
I turned to Dana and laughed out loud. “Screw K-Mart!,” I said as we brushed past a group of meandering salesman sky blue vests. Dana snickered loudly. We were angry parental units who had waited in line for more than ninety minutes. Now we were going home empty handed. The glass doors whooshed open. A broiling noxious wind assaulted our senses as we made our way into the hazy afternoon.