This could easily be me.
Have you ever been shopping and seen something you would knock an old lady over to get?
Over the weekend, Seth and I ventured out to all the thrift stores in town in search of either a sofa or good-sized love seat for the apartment. This has proven to be more difficult than I’d originally thought, mostly because of limited finances. But also because this is only a temporary need.
See, I still have to go back to Kansas City to retrieve my furniture which is kindly being stored by my ex. Several antiques and a lot of odds & ends and pictures, statues, china & crystal, etc. So most of what we’ve put into this apartment is just “filler” until I can make the trip East. for furniture retrieval.
Before you prissy queens wrinkle your noses at the thought of Thrift Store shopping, think of this: According to several recent reports, more and more middle-to-upper middle class are doing their shopping at thrift stores and other secon-hand establishments. Mostly due to the economy. Another reason to thank Bush and all the idiots who ever voted for him.
So we are zipping from one thrift store to another, when we arrived at one downtown. At one point, we called our friends Robert & Martin (both of whom love to hit these places for the “good shit”). They’ve been in all of these places repeatedly and therefore know the layout of each by heart, as well as the frequency of when there might be some good shit there.
We arrived at one and Martin told me that the furniture was located in the back. Hearing this, I plowed through the enormous section of clothes (which never interest me, mostly because they never have anything in my size) and then saw couches. Lost in the forest of clothes, Seth was somewhere behind me. I yelled out, “Hey, I see sofas!!”
Seth was on my tail as I rounded the corner with laser-like precision. The problem was that my focus was on the sofas, not on any people who might be standing aroung the corner I just turned.
The corner was banked by this enormous wall of shoes, and there were two elderly ladies trying on those wares. Just as we turned the corner, I saw a cherry loveseat/sofa combo and made a dash for them. In the process, I ran smack into one of the shoe-shopping ladies, sending her head-first into a pile of used size six wedgies. Then, in my dumbass attempt to right my obvious wrong, I tried to help the lady up (who was strangely unphased and unconcerned) I grabbed her waist to help her up amid my apologies. This could easily have been misinterpreted as an inappropriate advance, and Seth probably recognized this, which would explain why he was yelling at me to let her go.
During this fiasco, I was also tripping over and knocking down stacks of shoes. At one point, it looked like an espadrille avalanche.
Seth decided to drag me away from this catastrophe before I caused the building to collapse.
In the end, the lady was perfectly fine. As a matter of fact, she never broke sentence from her conversation with her friend. Not once. It was as if she and her friend didn’t even notice that I’d pushed her into the shoes, or even that I was there man-handling her to help her up. Obviously this wasn’t her first time at the thrift store rodeo. I wonder now just how many times she’s been shoved aside by some dumbass who was desperate for furniture.
In retrospect, she’s lucky I wasn’t shopping for shoes!!
In the end, the sofa turned out to be crap, so we’re still looking for furniture.
I’m going to try the Salvation Army Store next. I hear they carry furniture…and they are always packed with old ladies.
