Unwanted Public Conversation & Street-side Interaction.

It is Black Friday; so for today, I give thanks that I was safely snug in my bed at 4AM, not clutching a styrofoam cup of Dunkin Donuts and waiting in line at Sears.  I give thanks that my inherently greedy nature does not ask of me to elbow middle aged women at the shopping mall and stampede through automatic glass doors to fill my craving for discounted power tools, flat screened televisions, sweaters with oversized holiday decals on them, glued by the agile fingers of foreign children.  I am extremely grateful that, as someone who lives in New York City, I am expected not to know what “Kohls” is.  “Oh, you mean the eyeliner of Cleopatra?” I will say, if questioned on the subject.  And the only item I ever plan to purchase at four in the morning would be a taxi cab ride to my apartment, with the side possibility of a Snickers ice cream bar from the Korean bodega.

I am thankful for knowing these things about myself, and sticking to my convictions on the matter.

That being said, I WILL go shopping today. I will go shopping and with a vigor usually reserved for athletic events: I will shop at the Goodwill.   One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, and one man’s ignorance is another man’s triumph.  What I mean to say is: one volunteer’s careless price tag application is Olivia’s three dollar Marc Jacobs blouse.  One grandmother’s weight gain is Olivia’s vintage Christian Dior skirt.

Crossgates Mall may be the third-largest shopping mall in the state but you cannot get the same kind of human drama, the Dickensian aspect, if you will, that you can at the downtown Salvation Army. I challenge you to find a rolled up plastic bag full of bullets at Chico’s. They just don’t have that kind of variety.

People shop at the Goodwill for three reasons. One: they have to shop there, which is to say, out of financial burden.   Two: they want to shop there, the temptation of the hunt akin to a gambling addiction (me.)   Three: they have escaped from their medium security mental institution and are seeking solace in the selection of lampshades.

I was wheeling my shopping cart through SLACKS one fateful Saturday. Squee-squee, went the misshapen wheel, over the linoleum.  Swish-swish, went the clothing, polyester brushing polyester, as the cart parted through, like Moses and the Red Sea.   An upbeat Motown song bounced along the crackling speakers, all tambourines and trumpets.  That’s when I saw a man, suspicious from the get-go, lingering near the edge of COATS.   Not suspicious in a street-way, which is to say, trench coat, black eye, machine gun, but suspicious in the Goodwill way, which is to say, Caucasian, presumably heterosexual, high-end sports attire.  Like a dad at a soccer game in a Hamburger Helper commercial.  That sort of guy.  Which made it all the stranger to notice the look in his eye: I would use the word extreme, extreme even for the wedding scene in a Bollywood movie.  Some kind of burning conviction, a fiery desire. My cart was stuck on a pleather mini-skirt.

“Are you Irish?” he asked, loudly, his voice booming over Al Green’s. “I just LOVE Irish girls!”

I backed out the aisle, “Look at the time!” I said, glancing down at my imaginary watch, and taking the pleather monstrosity with me. A shopping cart can act as both weapon and shield if necessary, and I made this clear to my audience by maneuvering it with an energetic three point turn, out of the racks and towards the cash registers.

This story ends well, I am glad to report, because nothing will induce me to leave a place of commercial opportunity except the fear of pernicious romantic advances. This story ends well because I learned something about myself that day; that I have something not everybody else has. I’m not talking about my eye for designer labels, hidden amongst drooping cotton tank tops. I’m talking about freckles.  Maybe these brown spots of mine were a danger to my integrity and physical well-being that day at the store. But today, during the season of Thanksgiving, I remember that fateful day, and am grateful for it.  Grateful for the knowledge that if one unstable man would bound across aisles of mothball-reeking cotton to get a closer look, then maybe I had something to be proud of, a previously unknown weapon in my arsenal, like that shopping cart.  I’ll take it, thank you.  One man’s trash, another man’s treasure.  I’m going for leftovers right now, so happy Thanksgiving to you all.

Image taken from All Over Albany