You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Shopping during the holidays.
It’s a claustrophobic wrestling match with sweaty strangers.
It’s toxic like brushing your teeth with asbestos flavored toothpaste.
It’s a raw nerve, exposed to a garbage can percussion band.
As I walked up the stairs at the local mall, side stepping tweens and texting idiots, I felt pressure. I was a human insect walking in a glass filled ant farm.
Shoppers were squeezing in on me and oxygen was fleeting.
All around me I heard the melodic vomit of jingle bells projected through a synthesizer in the canopy of twinkling lights.
Bell ringers and squealing high school girls and baby’s crying and dad’s yawning in a bleary eyed delirium. Holiday heinousness is a technicolor belch of excess.
I dealt with a myriad of store clerks who were obviously tired and less than customer service oriented. The counter girl at Aeropostle basically told me she was angry and sick of people like me.
“Why are you sick of me?” I felt like saying. I’m not asking you to bring me another sweater or pick toe scabs out of my socks. I’m buying a gift card. How freaking hard is that to activate?
The clerk was sick and tired of standing behind the register.
“I’ve been standing here since 5pm,” she said, her voice grating my ear drums like sand paper.
It was 8 pm. I did feel a little bit sad for her, wondering if she needed a potty break.
I also felt like taking my debit card and flicking her in the head with it. I felt like saying; “Hey Moron, shut up! Be happy you even have a job. Be glad you are not on hold with the state unemployment division who really could care less whether you live off food stamps or sleep in your damn car.
Speaking of my damn car, I also spent the better part of Saturday driving around 2 major malls.
Can you say quagmire? Can you say human headache?
Traffic on Mall Blvd. came to a grinding halt faster than Obama Health Care going through a Republican Controlled sub committee on spending.
Red lights. Exhaust. Mindless, driving zombies at the wheel of gas guzzling SUV’s.
It was a stop and go maze of metal and frayed nerves.
As I was waiting to go to Sports Academy, I watched a slug zoom by.
In the parking lot of this athletic store, I pulled down aisles that were packed tighter than a carnival cruise line buffet.
It was like a training mission in Afghanistan, going door to door, in close quarters, looking for an open stall.
When did buying presents from a million stores become part of the Christmas experience?
Isn’t Christmas about the birth of Jesus?
Does Jesus really want me to flick a sales girl in the head with a credit card?
Does Jesus really want me to flip off some old lady who snaked me out of a parking spot?
Does Jesus really care if I re gift a salad spinner for Uncle Dave?
What would Jesus do? I think he’d pull the straw of his baby manager up over his eyes and avoid the rush.
3 days till D day. Then the returns begin.
life’s crazy™