I was ready for the day to end when I boarded the tram to work this morning, and after a day of problem-solving, negotiating and troubleshooting with exasperated callers, then getting home in the 38 degree plus heat, the last thing I had in mind was making a trip to Northland. But, through negotiation with Mrs H, it was determined that I had to make a visit to Target tonight, to exchange the doll I had purchased on Monday for Littlest Miss H’s Christmas gift.
Just One Fix
While the idea of an excursion across town to Chaddy in the wee hours tomorrow morning – during their 24 hour pre-Christmas trading – has some appeal as a consumer fantasy, I drove off in the heat to the loud accompaniment of Ministry’s Jesus Built My Hotrod, and though I have no idea what the traffic is normally like on a Wednesday night at 8pm, it was quieter than I expected, and once I arrived, I happened upon a car park in no time.
As a means of relaxation en route, I found myself taking a mental inventory of all the cars I’d formerly owned, and checking whether or not I could recall their license numbers. I estimated more than sixty percent I could. Then I gave consideration to the option of investing in air-conditioning for our front room, so I could use my imagined iMac there one day, or whether it would just be better to plump for a MacBook Pro, which I could use in our already comfortably air-conditioned rear living area. An idle mind, a lazy mind, or a mind whirring incessantly in some kind of escapist overdrive?
As I entered through the crowded food court, I spied the bright red and white of my aptly named target in the distance, and if the iPhone had a telephoto zoom lens, I would have snapped a picture for posterity. With my baby doll in hand, I made a beeline through the brightness of the shopping centre’s new extension, which makes it seem more like a carbon copy of every other recently renovated shopping centre in Melbourne, amid the drifting shoppers, with their sleeping toddlers in prams, and thumbsuckers being dragged recalcitrantly around the shops past their bedtime, past Industrie and the T Shirt Bar – where my eye strayed, even as I knew I couldn’t afford to buy any of their overpriced designs (besides, Mrs H had ordered me not to buy anything else there), and on top of that, surely a portly Dad such as I, fast approaching middle-age, would look somewhat mutton-like in such get-up…
I put the thought out of mind. In Target I waited at the Customer Service counter while the casual and part-time teenage staff manned the checkouts. My purchase was refunded without incident. While I explained that my daughter preferred to have a doll dressed in blue, and this one was in pink, I think my explanation fell on deaf ears. I imagined my attendant was a high school dropout. She seemed to have an absence of will. Of course, it could have just been heat-induced torpor, but the mall was air-conditioned. Nevertheless, her service was nothing but desultory.
“That’s it, no worries,” she told me, as she handed me the EFT slip with fingers bedecked with manicured acrylic inserts. I signed for the refund, and I left. I was in and out within half an hour. I was inspired to write, and for that, I was grateful.
