Around 11:00 this morning, I was rushing around my apartment in a frenzy. I was already a tiny bit late, and still had an extra (read: unaccounted for in my lateness estimate) errand to run in my building’s basement before heading out to a meeting for my real job, for which meeting I am habitually late as it is.
As I tore my coat from its hanger, the oversized hanger popped off the door where it had been oh-so-unsteadily hanging, and hit me squarely in the center of the forehead. Hard.
Clearly, the day had nowhere to go but up.
In the aforementioned basement, I ran into my super, who, I think, has been ducking me lately. “You said something about your closet?” he asked foggily. He was referencing my frantic phone call from over a month ago, when one of my huge hanging kitchen cabinet doors finally came off one of its sadly overpainted hinges. Given the size and position of the door, there is a better-than-even chance that when the top hinge inevitably follows suit, I will be killed–probably in the act of doing dishes, which is a sad way for anyone to go.
Mentally preparing to be even a bit later, I described the door, and offered the man my old television as a bribe for coming to see it tomorrow. “Oh! Should I go now?” He looked ten years younger. Now I’m thinking I need to work the TV for more leverage–my bathroom ceiling is still scary-looking where the water damage came through.
Anyway, after my meeting (after all that, I wasn’t even especially late), I managed to finish my Christmas shopping. Since I have a toddler nephew to think of now, this, naturally, involved a trip to F.A.O. Schwartz.
I have been living in fear of that place for years, but am now starting to think that it was largely unwarranted. In fact, the most alarming part of the experience was the woman dressed as a toy dressed as a Buckingham Palace guard who nearly gave me a heart attack by popping out of the doorway to greet me as I arrived. Not okay.
Sure, it was a popular place, and there was the one family who insisted on taking pictures of and with everything, nearly causing an accident on the escalator (“Mommy! A polar bear!!” “Hang on; stay right there!!” Escalators move, people). And I did have to hide in another part of the store when a perky young woman announced that they were “about to recreate the famous scene from the movie…” and all the six-year-olds who have never seen it shriek “Big!!” But for the most part, it was actually a pleasant experience: not too crowded, no line at the checkout, and none of the claustrophobia or assault via soundwaves that I had braced myself to withstand.
I was so surprised that I called my mother, who, I now suspect, was the root of my phobia to start with. “Ah. The last time I went, it was traumatic. I brought you.” Say no more.
This is a place to shop for children, masquerading as a place to bring them. Of course I was a miserable toddler when I couldn’t play with everything, or get in the toy car, or whatever. The marketing people want children around to demand everything in sight, so they sell the store as an experience children must have, when that is frankly the worst idea I have ever heard. Go alone, buy a cute little plush toy, and then take your child to a petting zoo. Do not bring them to a “play place” unless you plan on spending at least a couple of hours there, unless you want your very own obscure cloud of guilt like the one that has haunted my mother for decades.
Confirming the reversal of my luck after the hanger incident, I lost one of my stepbrothers’ presents on the subway. And it was returned to me, by a very nice woman whom I could not hear at all, so I hope that our conversation made sense. (“Returned to me” might be misleading. She picked the bag up off the floor and began peering into it, which was when I realized that I was no longer holding my bag from that store. But she was still very nice, and I like to think that, had I been able to hear her, she would have been saying something like, “I was hoping there would be a name on the inside, so I could ask around.”)
And I found the cherry champagne, which is the key element in my New Year’s Eve Eve party. And it was not even marked up from last year–still $4 per bottle. Nick will just be beside himself with glee. Or scorn. The glee might just be me.