Copyrights reserved by the author. If you are in doubt, please click on 'Copyrights' and read the details.On some shopping trips only James Brown can help by J. G. Fabiano I was waiting at the mall the other day while my wife bought a blouse that originally cost over $100.00. Because of all the coupons she had saved, and the fact that there was a 30 percent off sale, she had whittled the price down to around $1.95. Then the clerk told her she was also entitled to a $10.00 gift certificate, which meant the store actually paid my wife $8.05 to buy the blouse. Needless to say, I am very impressed with the way my wife does her shopping. When my wife asked if it was all right if she did some more shopping I did not complain because I had visions of early retirement once Christmas was over. We decided she would go her way and I would go the opposite way because I had a tendency to make her nervous when she set up her deals. We then set a time we would meet at a specific area in the mall and off we both went to do what we had to do. Except I did not have a clue what I was doing. If the expression `fish out of water' ever needs an illustration just take a photo of me wandering the labyrinthine halls of any mall in the country. Since I had an hour and a half to kill before my wife had finished building up our fortune for the day I decided to check out some of the other stores in the mall to see if there was anything that I could possibly play with. Drifting aimlessly through the mall I was disappointed to see that everything on display this year seemed to be the same stuff that has been on display every year for the past dozen or so holiday seasons. The first place I wandered into was a bookstore. This usually kills at least an hour of the time allotted to have my wife peacefully shop without me hanging around. I wonder if I am the only one who notices how bookstores no longer sell only books. Calendars take up a lot of space at most bookstores, especially at this time of year. They sell many different types of calendars but my favorites are the ones that come in little cube-shaped boxes that sit on one's desk and set a theme for the year. There are calendars about cats, cartoon characters and sports. There are calendars that are nothing but rude jokes and there are calendars that connect one's future to the stars. However, one cannot really understand what a calendar has to offer without opening it up and looking through at least the month of March. I did just that at this particular bookstore, opening up the box as carefully as I could so I could reseal it without the next potential buyer realizing it had ever been opened before. As I've done in the past I failed miserably and when I re-sealed the box it looked as though it was already a year old. By this time a clerk at the bookstore had noticed my failed attempts to seal the box and asked me if I was going to buy it. I held it up and asked him if he really thought I needed a year's worth of advice about how to survive menopause. He then asked if I was finished destroying his inventory and I took this as my cue to head back out into the mall. The next store I wandered into, looked like one of those giant head shops left over from the 1960s. The interior was illuminated by black lights and most of the posters on the wall glowed. I also noticed that most of them advertised musicians who were either dead or older than me.Wandering amongst people that were no older than the sneakers I was wearing I noticed something I hadn't seen in about 30 years - a lava lamp. I had no idea they still existed. They came in many different colors and some even played music while the blob of heaven-knows-what inside the lamp cavorted in a weirdly hypnotic slow-motion dance. I was so excited to find something from my misspent youth I grabbed one of the display models quite forgetting that, after these lamps had been on for some time, they became very hot. I was reminded of this fact immediately my fingers became welded to the lamp, at which point I screamed and threw it to the floor. That was when I remembered something else about the lava lamp; when it burst it made an incredible mess. Another store clerk ran up to me and asked if I had any idea what I had done. I said: "Yes, I have burned my fingers and released something highly radioactive into the atmosphere!" While he thought about it I headed for the door, passing a pimply faced pre-teen boy who said the explosion of the lava lamp was ‘cool‘. I responded by holding up two burnt fingers to give him the peace sign, something I haven't done in over three decades. My next stop was a computer store that sold the latest software for the state-of-the-art multimedia computers we are all supposed to have at home. When I bought my new computer I thought I had the most up to date machine, but that was two years ago. Now it seems a computer is out of date the minute you take it out of its box. I didn't stay long in this store because it seems that most of the latest software is created for the young man or woman who enjoys killing things. I next wandered into one of the larger department stores where I noticed a life-size figurine of James Brown on display with little dolls of other famous people, like Elvis and Humphrey Bogart. I also noticed that all the dolls had a switch on the front. Being a man all my life and therefore afflicted with the Y-chromosome, I turned the James Brown doll on. The doll immediately burst out with a loud scream and the opening bars of "I Feel Good." What was really impressive about this doll was that it not only played the words and music it also moved in ways that were remarkably similar to the way the real James Brown danced. How cool was this, I thought, and tried to follow the motions of the doll while mouthing the words I knew by heart. Together James and I jerked and twitched in time to the music. Of course the James Brown doll couldn't spin like the real James Brown, but I could. The moment we hit the words ‘I got you‘ I went into my spin and came back around to face the doll, only to find myself looking into the eyes of a lady sales clerk who looked like she had been through a very long day of dealing with people like me. The words to the rest of the song died on my lips as she turned off the James Brown doll then turned back to speak to me. It was then I realized there was this uncanny silence and all these people standing around watching. The sales lady looked at me with a very steady gaze and then, in a very pleasant voice, said: "Does your mommy know where you are?" I met my wife at the agreed place in the mall, at the agreed upon time. She was carrying about a dozen bags from various stores in the mall filled with stuff that had only cost her about $50. She noticed that I was carrying only one. When she asked me what it was I told her it was a doll. "A doll?" She said. "What do you want with a doll?" I told her it made me feel good! The End
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