Open Writing

It was not long before Christmas Day and I had decided to go shopping. Can you say, “Stress?” No, it wasn’t me this time, I was simply out to run a few errands and to enjoy the day since my family had already had an early Christmas together. It was just that I noticed a lot of anxious people in the aisles of the stores and I thought I would warn you.

It was one of those days when I felt like I had a sign on my forehead that said, “Ask me a question”. I don’t know why but when I go shopping strangers talk to me, and this day was no exception. It was like the time when I went to the grocery store and a young woman I had never seen before asked me “Do you know where the “Tar-Tar” is?” I thought perhaps it was some new fangled game or baby toy that she was talking about so I asked her to repeat the name.

“Tar-Tar,” she pronounced the word slowly as if somehow her emphasizing the word would cause me to understand. “ I don’t know what it is,” she continued, “but I have a recipe that calls for cream of Tar-Tar,” she added.

“Oh, cream of tartar!” I exclaimed. “It’s over with the spices,” I informed her, as I finally understood what it was that she needed. She was just pronouncing it the way that she had read it because she was unfamiliar with the word and she had forgotten the whole name. I could have told her that back in high school my chemistry teacher, Mr. Frazee, would have called it potassium hydrogen tartrate. However, it sounds kind of sinister to say, “I believe I’ll add a bit of potassium hydrogen tartrate to the meringue on this pie I’m making.”

Yes, today seemed to be another one of those days. I was meandering through the jewelry department when an older lady with a look of concern on her face turned to me and said, “Excuse me, could I ask your opinion?”

Maybe it was from the trauma of raising teenagers but those words just sounded like music to my ears. “Well, sure!” I responded with excitement at the thought that someone wanted my opinion. At the same time, I was still a bit hesitant as I still had those teen years on my mind and I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe she was going to ask me for my car keys.

The lady continued, “ I want to buy a watch for my 16 year old grandson, which one would you buy?” she said as she thrust about six different watches in front of me to choose from. She added, “I would ask my husband but he got tired of helping me make decisions and went to another part of the store,” she sighed.

“Wouldn’t you know it,” I thought. Husbands like to wait and see how the gift is accepted. If the boy raves over the gift, it is all the husband’s idea. If the boy seems a bit hesitant in his praise, the husband says, “I told your Grandma that you wouldn’t like it. That’s not the one I would have chosen.”

Well, I gave the lady my opinion and she seemed relieved because I had agreed with her own choice and maybe if things didn’t turn out well on Christmas morning she could always say, “That dumb lady I saw in the store suggested that watch, I knew all along it wasn’t the one you would like.”

However, I felt pretty good about that encounter so I walked on down another aisle and before long I found myself in the toy department. I noticed a young redheaded girl who kept pacing back and forth in the aisle. Finally, she turned to me and said, “I am just SO stressed! I have been looking for over an hour for something for my nephew. What do you get a 6-year-old boy with tons of energy? What do you think I should get?” She looked at me with eyes that pleaded for me to have an answer. I quickly blurted out, “A sled…. get him a sled!” I don’t know what made me say that except that I was standing there in front of the sleds. She looked relieved and said, “Oh, thank you so much!”

I decided it was time I got away from the toy department so I walked on over to the bath and cosmetic area. Just as I arrived, a middle-aged lady was looking at a tester for foaming shower soap. She looked at the bottle, sniffed it, and held it up to spray a bit of it on her hand. All at once a sudsy spray sputtered and exploded from the bottle and went all over her. She was covered from head to toe in bits of foamy soap spattered haphazardly across her body. She looked like she had just been in a terrible snowball fight and lost! She let out a yell and said, “I guess I shouldn’t have done that!” Everyone was staring at her, including me. I wondered if there might be a candid camera somewhere and if this was all going to be on the evening news. I tried hard to control my amusement as I helped her brush off the soap. I couldn’t wait to turn down a different aisle where I pulled the collar of my coat up over my face, trying to muffle my voice so she couldn’t hear me as I exploded into laughter. It wasn’t that I was laughing at the lady’s misfortune; I was just relieved that for once I wasn’t the one that was the victim of some wild calamity!

The unsuspecting shoppers looked at me and then looked around to see what could be so funny in the pharmacy aisle that could cause such hysterical laughter. About that time, I bumped into a stack of vitamins and knocked them over. People were moving aside, giving me plenty of room in front of the pharmacy pick up window, probably thinking that I might be in dire need and in a hurry to pick up a prescription for sedatives.

I just thought I’d warn you and let you know to be careful. It can be dangerous out there. There are a lot of people shopping this time of year and anything can happen! You never know when you might get spattered with soap or put on the spot to help choose a gift for someone. Oh, but if you do find that you need some cream of Tar-Tar, let me know because I can tell you exactly where to find it.

© December 2005

Pam lives in Missouri with her husband, Michael. She enjoys composing music and writing stories. She writes "Pam's Corner" for her local newspaper, The Edina Sentinel. Pam and her husband are active in their church where she plays piano and he is music leader. They have a CD available called, "I'll Walk You Home". The title song is about her lifelong friend who died of cancer. You can hear this song on her website: http://blaines.us/PamyPlace.htm
Several of her stories have been published on the internet as well as in books such as The Miracle Of Sons, 2The Heart/People Who Make A Difference, and A Tribute To Moms. Her goal is to write to encourage others and to write stories for her children and grandchildren so that stories and family history will be preserved.

Send Pam an e-mail and let her know what you thought of her story: pamyblaine@blaines.us

"Security is not the absence of danger,
but the presence of God"

"NO ONE IS USELESS IN THIS WORLD
WHO LIGHTENS THE BURDEN OF ANYONE ELSE"

http://www.greatcom.org/laws/englishkgp/default.htm