Monday, November 29, 2010

The princess and the pea


The pound store is like Hindu meditation, just a mind emptying sorting of clothes where I reach Nirvana after picking my way through 30 bins....

When I lived in Palm Bay I never found anything but my friend Jennifer that came camping did so I gave it another try...

Certainly I'm joking about the Hindu meditation because I am unabashedly christian...
however I have no other way to explain the nothingness my brain has to go to keep up the hunt.

It's kind of like the place your mind has to go when you go to WallyWorld, you know there are going to masses of people down every isle and screaming children and people wearing their unmentionables as outerwear and check out lanes 30 minutes long with cashiers that checked their own brain at the door to deal with everything you don't want to experience yourself.

In Palm Bay, the Goodwill pound store was empty of shoppers and the tables were piled literally 3 feet high and I found it impossible to sort through....in Jacksonville there is a whole nuther theater going on. At first I wasn't sure I wanted to go back. Every 20 minutes or so a tall older black man rolls a cart of stuff to the back barking all the while for people to get out of the way...which is hard to hear when you're on your way to Nirvana....While he's gone 30 or so regulars are lining up around the area that the cart is going to be returned. Then he rolls back the cart and there is even more jockying for position and things being grabbed out of hands and old ladies knocked over and ....I'm not exaggerating
but
When I see a cart being taken to the back I move several isles over and stay out of the fray and find all the treasures that those crazed inner city people have abandoned even though their own carts are filled to overflowing. My mom saw the treasures I was bringing home and her curiosity was peaked.
"What are they doing with all that stuff?" she kept wondering....
and I wondered myself but it distracted me from Nirvana so like a fly I had to regularly swat it out of my thoughts. I did ask the cashier and she didn't know either, but she did say when those people get to rough (I guess she has a different definition of rough than I do) they are escorted out of the store and not allowed back.

And yes, two of my children go with me....ask to go in fact. They have their own bins that the madcow shoppers don't bother with. I guess the 3 toy bins aren't as attractive to them. The first time Elise went she found almost all of the 24 pieces to the Melissa and Doug Princess Elise Magnetic Dress up set....including the yellow wooden box. She may not be able to sit quietly during church or while momma is talking to ladies who have perfectly mannered children of their own but for an hour she dug through that bin pulling out one little magnetic piece at a time reaching her own Nirvana at the end. It's crazy, we're two peas of the same pod that is for sure.

I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you.
Luke 10 : 19

3 comments:

Gloria said...

I love this story, the way you describe the events, the people, the experience. It was like I was reading the first page of a book and I wanted to keep on reading to see what happens next.

gideonmommasita said...

Thank you, you're my favorite friend!

sister sheri said...

Love this! When I make my way to your neck of the woods, you will take me to this Nirvana!