Dollar Store Aficionado

I made the mistake of going to my local dollar store on a Saturday evening. I thought that I’d slip in and buy a few paper products, some soap, and maybe a new shower curtain. I also planned to look in their CD bin and see if there was anything worth adding to my IPod.

The store was crowded. I should have known better than to go into the store in the first place, but I had abanded my couch and to return now without a bag of paper towels and toilet paper would be admitting defeat to home furnishing and I was not prepared to do that.

There were small, unattended children running throughout the store. I tell myself that I need to put up with this as payment for all the saving I was about to receive. I dodge each of these children, being mindful of their personal space while realizing they had no concept of mine. I stepped around them carefully and politely, not so much for their benefit, but as more of a show for any parents watching from afar. At times like these I imagine myself in a court of law explaining the way in which I stepped around the child. “It’s not my fault he started crying”, I explain.

Children are sticky. They touch everything. Forget about rats spreading the plague, little unattended children in the grocery store will be our undoing. I once stood in a line in which there were four grocery carts in front of me. Two of these carts were miniature grocery carts with little flags that read “Customer in Training.” We have people in this country that don’t want the president addressing their children in the classroom, for fear of indoctrination, but their ok with the Food Loin making them into mindless shopping machines. While in this line I witnessed these two children, each of which had exactly one box of cereal in their tiny cart, touch every single piece of candy on display. For good measure one of these children sneezed all over the candy section. Much like the chapter on personal space these children had not gotten to the point in the lesson plan where we cover our month when we sneeze.

So I’m in the line at the dollar store and the mother of three of the children that have been running in the store is standing in front of me. She is wearing a tube top and I guess you call them “booty shorts”. Every TV show I watch tells me not to try this at home. There is a warning label on my mattress, pillow, and there is one of the plastic shower curtain I am about to buy reminding me that it is not a toy. I guessing “booty shorts” don’t come with a warning label. I know for a fact that my mother never worn a pair of shorts like that.

“I’m fixing to get up out of her,”(Yes, she said her.) the woman said right before she began calling for her children. “Tyrone, Aliyah and Aficionado get up her.” The children quickly made their way to the line each with toys to be purchased. I understand from listening to Aliyah that they had each been instructed to find one item they could buy. Aliyah had selected a clear plastic flute. I had an image of her one day being classically trained and performing in a large music hall and thinking I was there when it all began. Her mother took one look at it and said “what the hell are you going to do with that?”

Aficionado on the other hand was torn between two options. One was a stuffed penguin wearing a bowtie and the other was a plastic Spider Man with a parachute. He wasn’t sure which one he wanted. I was thinking penguin, kid. There will be days when that stuffed animal is the only friend you have. A plastic Spider Man with a parachute is just hours of disappointment waiting to happen.