After getting slammed while sitting in Black Friday traffic a few years back, I've learned to stick to thrift shops on the traditional first day of holiday shopping. Yet somewhere between Goodwill and Salvation Army, I got the urge to work in a visit to GAP, my rationale being the replacement of the black tank my daughter "borrowed" during her recent visit.
As I sit here just before 1:00 AM Saturday morning, I think I just needed a Christmas jump start.
Or just a jump start period.
Heavy is the best way to describe this past year. Literally, my head and ears have felt weighed down for months, my sinuses making themselves known to me after a lifetime of sweet solitude beneath my facial structure. I've experienced several changes at home and at work, nothing to write home about, but enough to consider if my stuffy head is some sort of psychosomatic attempt to block out any further infusion of intrusion into my every day.
I figured a jaunt through the throng of a busy crowd would get me in the holiday mood. With my ears cracking and popping, I purchased the black tank and cut an exit through Kid GAP, where a boy about nine repeatedly tossed a wool cap up into the air, oblivious to his mother's clucking.
My life's been a lot like that cap lately, spiraling down only to spiral back up. Something happens, then something else, then yet something else again and more often than not, the something is that someone else's cap has somehow clapped itself down on my stuffy head.
The mother finally jerks the cap out of her son's hands, tosses it back on the display and jerks the kid past me and out of the store. My ears pop as he laughs at his mom and I feel a little dizzy at how easily he repels her frustration.
I turn away from the laughing boy and head through a surprisingly thin crowd towards Starbucks, where coffee at this time of the year often tastes of peppermint.
