thank you ever so kindly.
Hi Jeepers! Since you have been such a polite and pleasent newbie, I will tell you a story related to this link that you posted. It's a story the involves me crying in a Wal-Mart, so read on if you dare:
In the time in between high school and when I went to university, as many of the regulars here know, I worked at a Wal-Mart. What many don't know is that my time at Wal-Mart was a time of sadness, not just
because I was working at Wal-Mart, but because shortly after beginning my job there before the holiday shopping rush, my first true love tore my heart out of my chest and stomped up and down on it in front of me in a restaurant parking lot. So I was this sad little girl in a blue vest, selling blenders and mixers and razors (oh my!) and living with my parents and just basically hating my life. So I'd go to work, do the Wal-Mart wiggle, and then head off to deal with the world of consumers and the things they consumed, and I was a sad, sad little girl.
I quickly made friends with the equally depressed pre-university girl in the toy department who management disliked since she started getting numerous piercings and dying her hair interesting colours a few months after they hired her. She and I took a great deal of pleasure in going to the doll isle and staring that the rows and rows of
Spice Girl dolls we remained transfixed by them for large increments of time, until someone from middle management would find us and put us back to work. So I had these moments of fun with my coworker, but was generally pretty broken hearted, and would occasionally go hide in the bathroom and cry a little bit - my poor tender heart and a boy much too old for me you see.
Anyway, more and more Christmas items started coming in and I went with my friend to unpack some new stock that had arrived. We opened a box and there was the friendly face of Elmo looking up at his. "Tickle Me Elmo? What does this thing do?" we wondered, and then we quickly learned what he did - he laughed and then he vibrated in such a way as to shake himself box and all off the shelf. We found this really funny, and mildly disturbing, and had no idea that we would hear the question "Do you have the Tickle Me Elmo?" so much that we'd want to murder! So we stacked boxes of Elmos onto the shelves unaware at the time that they would become the Christmas hot ticket item, and after getting them on the shelf, we set about two dozen of them off on a vibrating fit for the fun of it, watched them tumble to a pile on the floor, then reshelved them all again.
The next box was not more Elmos, but a crate full of Chia Pets, these were
not so fun to shelve, and my coworker was needed elsewhere, so I was left to unpack the Chia Pets alone. After unpacking a few, I started to read the packaging, and on the side of the box it noted that a "Chia Pet makes a great Gift!" and listed it's attributes. I can only remember the last item listed for sure, but it went something like this: "Easy to Grow! Great for Fun, Entertainment, and
Companionship!" Now, to this day, the idea of anyone,
anyone using a Chia Pet for companionship is still a hauntingly depressing concept to me, but at that point, when I read if for the first time, I actually started to cry right there in the Seasonal Christmas items isle. I imagined all the elderly people who fondly tended to their Chias. I imagined some loser kid who didn't have any friends hanging out and talking to his Chia as if it were a friend. And being the newly dumped, I imagined
me, sitting in my room, listening to my CD's and watering my Chia. I hid in the back stock room until my shift was almost over.
Now it just seems sort of silly, but seriously -
companionship? From a lump of wet terracotta and some sprouts? That is seriously,
seriously The Saddest Thing.