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Post-Holiday (Black and) Blues |
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For ultimate safety, wear padded clothing, crush-resistant gardening gloves and steel-toed shoes of the kind favored by ingot-makers in Pittsburgh.
You can survive with only minor injuries if you’ve had some training in hand-to-hand combat.
It’s probably worth spending a few extra bucks on sheets a week or two later rather than enduring several hours trapped in a piranha-like feeding frenzy.
The gauntlet for The Native started just inside the door, where a 5-foot-11 woman with a sumo wrestler’s physique knocked several people into stacks of towels with a deft hip block and began grabbing items on sale with her bratwurst-size fingers. Hordes of people seemingly joined at the hips moved as one in tidal surges toward each open counter. Squads from Rescue 911 waited by the doors as the weak of heart, spirit or lung lost consciousness, were lifted to the top of the crowd like drunken fans at a British soccer game and passed along by a sea of hands toward the exit.
There are no directions for the uninitiated and no signs within stores to lead the way. Experienced exchangers, like salmon struggling upstream to spawn, know by instinct where to go for proper service. The Native, largely clueless, hopped in the shortest line, worked his way to the front by lunch and tried to exchange the Led Zeppelin Linen Collection for something in a subtle shade of blue, only to be redirected by the clerk to another line on a different floor.
We can’t blame the clerks. The human resources offices of the various stores probably have a hiring profile for the return and sales counters that selects former flower children with the mellowness to meditate amid hostile fire on the Gaza Strip; junior high gym teachers on holiday; former group leaders of est or other encounter groups; lobotomized veterans of airline customer service counters; and practitioners of any fringe religion involving vows of silence and slow motion. This includes those trained in the ancient oriental art of tai chi-chi, where they focus all attention on the septum of the other person, never make eye contact, talk in tongues and block out all intrusions by anyone with bad karma, breath or attitude.
The Native and anyone over 40, however, have to share some of the blame for the post-holiday crunch. The number of things to exchange grows in direct proportion to age, since we grow harder to shop for as we age and as all the relatives and friends have taken to shopping on-line at e-Bay and the Internet discount sites to save money and time. We used to get socks, best-selling novels and ski, tennis or golf clothing. Now we get Supp-Hose, diet books and gift certificates to The Back Store.
Some things can’t be returned, because no one will admit selling them in the first place, or they were bought on-line at auction or fall into the collector category. What to do with coffee-table books such as Macrame of the Third Reich, Scenic Marine Helicopter Routes and The Cher Eyelash Health and Fitness Book? The Franklin Mint has a no-return policy on its special collectors’ series of plates celebrating The Great Greenskeepers of Augusta (the first of 12 arrived in December, so we have something special to look for in future years). And trash cans might not be good enough for random CDs: Pee-wee Herman Unplugged, Tonto, Robin and Cheetah—Famous Sidekicks Celebrate the Songs of the Season, The Tiny Tim Boxed Set and The Three Tenors Sing the Best of Wayne Newton.
Next year, we’ll have a pre-Christmas house-and-closet pruning of clothing and household items we may have outgrown or out-aged (or that were left behind when the nest emptied), put everything neatly into the garage and arrange for Goodwill, St.Vincent de Paul or Amvets to pick up our donations on December 26.
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