A christmas quest
Dec. 9th, 2008 04:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jeanvieveSo a friend of mine is overworked, overstressed, and over-everythinged, and I had the notion of breaking my no prezzies rule to send a small token of Holiday cheer. I've bought mistletoe before. It's small, it's cheap, and it usually costs more in postage than cover price. The perfect "Look, it's like an expensive card you can hang in your doorway" sort of present.
This turned out to be more complicated than I had thought it would be.
I'm a veritable child of the supermarket, the grocery stores that sell a little of everything. I've bought mistletoe at Albertsons years ago, didn't I? Little packages clipped to racks, sure. While at the grocery store here, I asked about it. "Mistletoe?" , the woman asked of me, in the tone one might ask about your intentions to drop your children headfirst off the garage, and not in the good way. "No, I ain't got no idea." Or English, I thought to myself, but why antagonize the lady that handles your money?
Surely a nursery will have it, I thought. Off after the store to the nursery, a big place I've always wanted to visit. They close their doors at 6pm. I stand in the parking lot, staring almost disbelievingly about the locked up Christmas trees. It's two weeks plus to Christmas, their stores of firs, pine, gorgeous cheap trees are enormous, and they aren't staying open long enough for people to get off work and come buy them. If the assumption is people are all unemployed, and that's not an unreasonable thought in this economy, why try to sell them at all? But no. The sidewalks are rolled up.
Maybe Wilco, a rural feed type store with lots of animal equipment. They've got other agrarian stuff! No. A thousand flavors of pig ears, but no mistletoe. Now, in each of these places, there's a faintly disbelieving air as people asked about it. "What do you want that stuff for?", mutters one of the stock clerks in the feed section. "Smooches!", I declare, and he gives me a complete hairy eyeball.
Last chance, what about the hardware store? They've got Christmas stuff. No one is manning their Christmas section, either. I'm now really sympathetic with the economists. These Holiday oriented places are nearly Quaker prayer meeting in stillness and repose. But I mustered a few clerks to ransack the area and search the database. "Mistletoe? Mistletoe. Do we still carry Mistletoe? What do people use it for these days?"
Again, these are questions I'm running out of words for. They look at me, confused. I look at them, confused. I realize again that I am not from around here. But I did get my mistletoe at Jerry's.
This turned out to be more complicated than I had thought it would be.
I'm a veritable child of the supermarket, the grocery stores that sell a little of everything. I've bought mistletoe at Albertsons years ago, didn't I? Little packages clipped to racks, sure. While at the grocery store here, I asked about it. "Mistletoe?" , the woman asked of me, in the tone one might ask about your intentions to drop your children headfirst off the garage, and not in the good way. "No, I ain't got no idea." Or English, I thought to myself, but why antagonize the lady that handles your money?
Surely a nursery will have it, I thought. Off after the store to the nursery, a big place I've always wanted to visit. They close their doors at 6pm. I stand in the parking lot, staring almost disbelievingly about the locked up Christmas trees. It's two weeks plus to Christmas, their stores of firs, pine, gorgeous cheap trees are enormous, and they aren't staying open long enough for people to get off work and come buy them. If the assumption is people are all unemployed, and that's not an unreasonable thought in this economy, why try to sell them at all? But no. The sidewalks are rolled up.
Maybe Wilco, a rural feed type store with lots of animal equipment. They've got other agrarian stuff! No. A thousand flavors of pig ears, but no mistletoe. Now, in each of these places, there's a faintly disbelieving air as people asked about it. "What do you want that stuff for?", mutters one of the stock clerks in the feed section. "Smooches!", I declare, and he gives me a complete hairy eyeball.
Last chance, what about the hardware store? They've got Christmas stuff. No one is manning their Christmas section, either. I'm now really sympathetic with the economists. These Holiday oriented places are nearly Quaker prayer meeting in stillness and repose. But I mustered a few clerks to ransack the area and search the database. "Mistletoe? Mistletoe. Do we still carry Mistletoe? What do people use it for these days?"
Again, these are questions I'm running out of words for. They look at me, confused. I look at them, confused. I realize again that I am not from around here. But I did get my mistletoe at Jerry's.
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no subject
Date: 2008-12-10 12:51 am (UTC)Yay Jerry's!
Date: 2008-12-10 12:58 am (UTC)Congratulations on success!
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Date: 2008-12-11 01:33 am (UTC)