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Saturday, January 15, 2005
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Call me Huck...
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Well, in spite of the nightmare of Thursday the 13th, something interesting came of it. I mentioned that my cell phone failed. As my employer provides my phone to me, I contacted our MIS guy who is responsible for all of our cell phones. He gave a most helpful reply:
"Bring it to a Verizon store, there is one in Nashua."
So I informed my boss that I was going to have my phone serviced, and left. 20 minutes later, I enter the Verizon store, and the salespeople come at me like a pack of dogs. This sort of caught me off guard because I have never been in a cell phone store before. So I pull out my broken phone and tell them that I need to get this serviced. The wolf pack instantly breaks up, looking pretty dejected and the Alpha Male looks at his feet, motions towards the back of the store and says "At the desk in the back."
So I go to the back and there is a guy named "Tad" there who takes my info. I find this sort of funny, because way back when I was first learning about electronics and phone systems and such, TAD was an acronym for "Telephone Answering Device". How appropriate. In a few minutes, Tad tells me that he is out of my model of phone, but that he called down and they have one at the store in the Pheasant Lane Mall just a minute or two down the road, and he has had them hold it for me. That is fine with me, so I take my stuff and head for the mall. When I get there, I enter the mall through one of the general entrances, thus avoiding the necessity of setting foot in the Red-Commie-Pinko-French-owned TARGET store. I forgot to make a point of sneering as I passed their entrance. So I go into the mall. Understand that I don't go to malls very often, as they just don't sell a lot of stuff that I care to buy. It has been 8 or more years since I was in this particular mall. It was like being Huckleberry Finn. Well, sort-of. No, it was not before the civil war (or "The War Between The States" as Cassie now insists on calling it) and I was not on a raft on a huge river. And it only lasted 40 minutes. But otherwise, it was almost the same. I saw many amazing sights and it was a great adventure. I did not help out any escaped slaves, but I did see two wage-slaves, behind the counter of the Orange Julius place. I know they where poor and enslaved, because all they could afford to buy was shirts that stopped 3 inches above their navels and pants that stopped several inches below said navels, leaving them to suffer the indignity of having to work with their somewhat distended guts sticking out of their clothes, being chafed by the edge of the metal counter. My I never suffer such a fate.
Anyhow, I found the Verizon mall store, went in, dodged the wolves with a quick flash of my broken phone and made it to the "desk in the back". Tads buddy took my info and my phone, made me sign some stuff and told me it would take about 30 minutes to clone my phone and activate the new one. So I decided to do a lap around the mall and look around. I looked around as I walked but I did not see much that caught my interest. Mostly clothes stores selling clothes for wage-slaves. I walked into a Radio Shack store, (being an electronics guy and Radio Shack Alumni) and was attacked by guys trying to sell me cell phones. So I walked right out. I learned that there is now such a thing as a Thomas Kinkade store. (!) I could feel the hair at the back of my neck starting to stand up as I walked by it. All of that light was blinding, so I elected not to go in. I passed on the chance to pay a buck to sit in a vibrating recliner chair, though it was a tempting offer. I turned down 2 offers (I 'm not making this up) to have the battery in my watch replaced by guys in those middle-of-the-mall kiosk things. I turned down those generous offers because I was not wearing a watch, and if I were, it would probably be one with a good battery. I decided not to buy the dark stained wooden plaque with a beautiful shiny lacquered painting of Bob Marley smoking a joint. I figured I would check out the bookstore, as we love books around here, but they only had maybe 50 books, all boring.
Crossing the mall, I spotted a pet store, "Debbie's Petland". I thought I would go and check out the fish section. Double-digit years ago, I was a mildly serious fish guy, and it has been a very long time since I looked around a fish store. I braved the sad puppy faces in the cages and the mice, gerbil and bird department to the back of the store where the fish where. It turned out to be a pretty disappointing fish department. Not many fish and nothing very interesting or unusual with the possible exception of a tank of sticky-looking albino aquatic frogs. There where a few cool turtles (we are big turtle fans, as you all know). But most of the tanks looked sort of empty and not too clean. Yuck. But while looking at a shelf with an amazing array of ferret supplies, I spotted (right next too the row of FERRETSHEEN brand ferret shampoo) a hermit crab house! Years back we had 2 pet hermit crabs that we were all very fond of. They are way cool pets. They have distinct little personalities, eat anything, are not much maintenance, inexpensive and pretty hard to kill through neglect. So I looked around to see if they had any hermit crabs for sale, as I was ready to buy a couple. I looked around the fish and turtles again and saw none. Checked in the lizard, reptile and tarantula section, but found no Hermit crabs. Disappointed, I headed out of the pet store back out into the mall. I turned to head down the main drag and walked past the big mallside display case that the pet store had, I noticed that it was the hermit crab display! Hermit crabs were the Featured Pet! But my thrill was short-lived, and almost immediately turned to disgust. As I am sure you all know, hermit crabs live in the abandoned shells of other sea animals. That is one of the neat things about them. Well here at this stupid pet store, they had all of the shells PAINTED (!) with bright, silly looking polka dots and stripes and stars and things. There was not one single unadulterated crab. Sad. The once noble hermit crab, made-up like clowns. I turned away so as not to further embarrass the poor things. Feeling their shame, I moved on.
By now it was just about time to go get my new phone, so I made my way back to the phone store. As luck would have it the wolves were converging on a fresh kill so they pretty much ignored me as I zipped to the back of the store. After a few signatures and small talk, I walked out with my new phone. I took a minute and sat in one of the benches in the mall in order to check over the phone and make sure it all worked and as I was sitting there a woman in a "Debbie's Petland" lab coat came walking down the mall carrying a puppy. They apparently send these people out to afflict mall-goers with cute puppy syndrome, and make them buy a dog. It was a black lab, I think. She had its head and front paws over her shoulder, and was hugging its body to her. I found myself thinking that it would be REALLY funny if the dog peed on her right then, but it didn't.
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thus voiced The A, Mistah @ 8:45 AM
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