It should come as no surprise to any of you that I cause
mayhem and general misbehavior in Michael's Craft Store.
Let it be known outright that I have a friend with me,
therefore I cannot be held personally responsible for my actions. I am being coerced. That's right, I'm quoting Jessica Rabbit,
albeit a little syntactically twisted:
"I'm not bad; I'm just drawn that way."
We start out innocently enough, slogging through the
flip-flops on sale outside in front of the store. They claim to be 89 cents per pair. I find one in my size. One.
No match, not a set. One. So of course we search through all three
giant wire display baskets until we find its mate. Turns out it's a fancy flip-flop and is not
$0.89 but rather $1.19. I feel like I've
been gypped, but I buy the pair, anyway.
Once inside the store, we are immediately drawn to the
steady poing-poing-poing-poing-poing sound that turns out to be a little girl's
shoes. At first we say, "Oh, isn't
that just so cute?" But in reality
it's a fucking pain in the ass noise.
Apparently, here in the North, kids like to wear those light-up shoes
that flash colorful bursts of illumination every time the heels hit the
ground. Down South, at least according
to this little girl's mother, all the rage is shoes that make popping sounds.
I have friends and relatives who live South of the
Mason-Dixon Line, and I've never heard of this.
Perhaps some of you can enlighten me further. I have to be honest, though, if your children
come into my classroom wearing those noisy-ass shoes, I might be tempted to
grab them off each child's feet ala Wicked Witch of the East (the
ruby-slippered feet sticking out from under Dorothy's house) and hurl them as
far over the nearest mountain as Napoleon Dynamtie's whacko Uncle Rico hurled
his football.
Who in the name of holy heartworm remotely hinted at the
possibility that this invention might be tolerable? Ten minutes after we first encounter the
little girl, I can still hear her poinging away in the art supply aisle. The noise is now driving through my skull
like hat pins through my ear drums. I am
beginning to understand how normal people can be driven insane. I quickly move away from the knitting needles
and crochet hooks lest they turn into implements of unnatural mayhem in my
hands.
I find myself in the bridal aisle. I have two kids getting married this fall
(not to each other). Well, one is
getting married in late summer; the other is getting married mid-fall. We are still trying to finalize favors for
the mid-fall wedding. I am searching
through some idea books, snapping pictures of anything interesting. My friend joins me in the quest, and we soon
move to the silk flowers and craft boxes area.
This is where we start behaving really badly. We decide to try adding fall foliage and
decorations and ribbons to small boxes that can be filled with candy or some
such minutiae. And how exactly do we add
this foliage so we can snap sample pictures?
Well, some of it comes from the floor where silk plants have shed pieces
under the displays. Some of it we pluck
clean off the actual display items. You
know, if there's a little pumpkin or some pretend seedlings or the top of a
silk Chrysanthemum that we want to experiment with, we snap it right from the
plastic stem structure.
In the end we have dozens of ideas and return most of the
silk floral pieces to the floor from whence they came. We casually place the tiny fake pumpkins back
amongst the fake greenery. In short, we
have about twenty pictures of various wedding favor samples that run the gamut
from the serious to the sublime to the sophisticated to the shocking to the silly. Most of the photos have my friend's hands or
fingers in them, making this whole process even more shocking.
I buy a few items -- some of it experimental wedding favor
stuff -- plus one pair of turquoise cheetah-patterned, and funky $1.19
flip-flops. Mercifully, Princess
Poing-Poing is nowhere to be heard. As I
empty the cart onto the belt, I realize there are some random items in my
basket: a silk maple leaf, some
plaster-based colored foliage seedlings, and a miniature plastic pumpkin. I don't truly know how these items ended up
in my shopping carriage, and I continue through the check-out line as if I
don't see a bloody thing, leaving the useless silk plantage in the cart.
We are so traumatized by the craft store shopping trip (not
really but we need an excuse) that we must stop at DSW and buy ourselves
shoes. My friend gets a nice pair of
Grecian-inspired sandals. I buy the
pewter-colored Bandolino sling-backs to match the other identical Bandolino
sling-backs I already own in other colors.
I'm telling you, since I had the worst one of my two bad feet surgically
rebuilt, I have become nothing short of a pure shoe whore. It's like I'm stockpiling all the shoes I
couldn't wear for decades until I had the procedure done. It's a goddamn sickness and a goddamn
disgrace. Someone with size 7.5 to 8
feet is going to be very lucky when I die and leave all those Bandolinos behind
me.
I'm not bad by nature, and I certainly don't mean to do
things like snap random pictures in the craft store nor behead silk mums in an
effort to advance wedding favor creative genius. But I am drawn to the adventure of it
all. This wouldn't be much of a blog if
I simply wrote: "Went to craft
store. Bought candy molds, a roll of
crystal beading, and some kick-ass flip-flops.
Followed it up with pewter Bandolinos.
The end."
Besides, I'm saving that speech for my bail hearing. Who knew it was illegal to behead fake
chrysanthemums? Somehow the fact that we
start out innocently enough just isn't a strong enough defense when we end up
looking guilty at the check-out. The
handcuffs are fun, though. I'm thinking
about bedazzling them if Michaels' Craft Store ever lifts the lifetime ban on
me so I can purchase the supplies. (I'm
just saying.)
