“You would if someone was in front of you,” she remarked.
“Okay!” I said, throwing up my hands. “Fine. You win the free-water battle. It’s yours. You win. Fine. I don’t need any water, I came over here to chew something. When you have something to chew, when you have a real sample, you let me know!”
And with that, after I was sure the sample lady had been enlightened at least slightly, I walked away, and after I walked for about ten seconds, I turned around to prove my point and that’s when I saw all the other sample ladies huddled with the water sample lady and she was pointing at me.
I Love Everybody, but Some People Are Simply Undeserving of the Love.
Now, with my original hour evaporating into about half of that, I needed to hurry. I got to the bakery counter, and as the baker was in the process of getting my cake, another customer, a lady with big hair, frosted in chunks, wearing a sleeveless oxford shirt with very tanned arms like tree trunks and far too much pungent perfume, came to the counter and yelled, waving her diamond-encrusted hand at the bakery lady, “Ma’am! Ma’am! I only have a question, this will only take a second!”
“I’ll be right with you,” the bakery lady said with a smile.
“But this will only take a second,” the lady insisted. “I’m in a hurry.”
“I’ll be right with you,” the bakery lady said again with a smile, and I waited.
“I’m sure this girl can wait, this will only take a second, and it’s important,” the smelly diamond lady said anyway. “That carrot cake you have over there, do you have any without walnuts? I can’t eat walnuts. I am peanut sensitive.”
I took a deep breath.
“The cakes on that table aren’t made by this bakery, so I don’t know,” the bakery lady informed the frosty, stinky lady as I waited. “Those come from other vendors.”
“Uh-huh,” the sleeveless, big-haired lady said. “Well, I can’t eat walnuts. So is there a carrot cake over there without them? My tongue swells up and I get hives. I get very itchy.”
“Those aren’t our cakes,” the bakery lady tried to explain as I still waited. “I don’t know what they have in them, we didn’t make them.”
“But my tongue gets big, very swollen,” the pungent diamond lady said. “I have a reaction because of an allergy and it could almost kill me.”
“Maybe you should try a chocolate cake, then,” the bakery lady said, trying very hard to be polite, and turned around to get my nephew’s cake.
“No, I can’t, I’m on a diet,” the big-armed peanut hater said as she turned her cart and rolled away before I could walk over and punch her.
Now, finally, with cake in hand, I sped toward the exit, through the bakery department, and toward the freezer section again and I was making good time. I was making really good time. I was flying, dodging children, precarious product displays, people running for samples. I was almost through the freezer section when my speedy progress came to a complete halt due to a lady in front of me, pushing her cart at a snail’s pace, her arms crossed over the handle of the cart as she leaned on it like the very lazy person she apparently was. I tried to get around her several times, but oncoming traffic in the freezer section was at a bottleneck; the sample ladies who had been merely setting up before were now open for business, and each sample station had become its own little beehive, buzzing with activity as people stood around almost like little baby birds, their mouths open, waiting for the sample ladies to toss a nugget in.
I couldn’t get around her, and she was making no effort whatsoever to pick up the pace, and I was stuck. I now had twenty minutes to get to my sister’s house, and my chances of making it on time were thin at best. I tightly clutched the handle of my own cart, chanting with a clenched jaw over and over again like a mantra, “I Love Everybody, I Love Everybody, I Love Everybody, I Love Everybody,” until I saw a break in cart traffic ahead and geared myself, getting ready to make a break for it. Within seconds, my chance had arrived and I took it: I jerked forward, clipping the slow, lazy lady’s heel in the process, swerved over to the right as I began to pass her, walked faster and faster, gaining on her. When I was merely two steps behind her, I could no longer hold it in; I could no longer absorb it; my Bounty paper towel of patience could sop up no more. I had had enough. I had had enough of the walnut lady, the deceiver sample lady, the cell phone girls, the parking space stealer, the nutsack truck guy, and now the slow walker, and I could take no more. My load was full, it was overwhelming, and I let it out, loud and clear, so the slow walker would absolutely hear—with the visual companion of my arms raised up, fingers spread, wrists a-shakin’, that’s right, Angry Jazz Hands—“Here’s an idea! Why don’t you just drop to all fours and crawl through the store! That just might be slower!”
And it worked. She did indeed hear me, I saw, as my cart became parallel with hers and she turned to look at me, although she couldn’t turn too much because that would have ripped the tube that was connected to her oxygen tank, which was sitting in her cart, right out of her nose. Right out of her nose. And both nostrils, too. Those tubes looked pretty short to me, as she leaned over to make sure they stayed in to keep her, well, alive.
DING! DING! DING! DING! I heard in my head, like the bell at the end of a boxing match. DING! DING! DING! DING! Bad review! Bad review! One order for another bad review coming right up! It’s spelled N-O-T-A-R-O.
I knew I had just RSVP’ed for my own personal spot in hell, right next to the Skin Pit, across from the Pool of Sin.
Forty minutes into my nice-person experiment and I was already out of the game.
I Love Everybody as Long as I’m Alone in My House.
I ducked down a side aisle, waiting until all witnesses to my meltdown—even I couldn’t consider bellowing at an old woman, whose life clock had been chiseled down to pretty much a matter of minutes, to haul her oxygen-deprived ass out of my way and giving her a flagrant, flashy display of Angry Jazz Hands as an Opportunity to Enlighten in any way—had dispersed throughout the store so that I could get out of the place without any more fingers pointing at me or a mob coming at me with a rope in tow.
I shook my head. I had failed. I had completely flunked at being nice. I was disappointed in myself—I really thought I could pull it off. I did. An hour ago I’d had so much faith in myself, I thought as I skulked down the aisle and then turned. I should be ashamed of myself. I couldn’t even be nice for a whole hour.
That’s when I finally looked up and found myself right back at the freezer department, square in front of the sample ladies, who were busy frying, toasting, and handing out free food.
Free food.
Free. No change needed, no change taken. No change made.
Well, why not? I said to myself, and walked over to the sample lady whose crowd was the smallest, although I couldn’t help but notice a big frosted head sticking out like a sore thumb. I smiled the biggest grin I had all day when I saw the sample lady was cutting up delicious-looking cookies, and I nodded at her as I helped myself to one.
She smiled and nodded back. “These are our wonderful chocolate chip cookies,” she said.
Someone from behind suddenly bumped me, and without an “Excuse me” or “Pardon me,” I saw a big, tanned, diamond-encrusted arm that looked awfully familiar reach up to the sample tray and grab two cookie pieces like a goblin then suddenly retreat, almost if on cue.
I turned around and there she was, her big frosted head opening wide to pop in the cookie bits. I waited until she chewed a couple of times and I saw her swallow.
I was a bad girl.
A bad girl with nothing to lose.
“These are the most wonderful cookies I have ever eaten in my life!” I said as loudly as I could, then turned to the frosted chewing head, who nodded vigorously in agreement. It was then that I embarked on a huge Opportunity to Enlighten with a bold-faced, nutty lie. “Don’t you just love chocolate chip walnut cookies? I am crazy about these walnuts!!”
I Tr
ied to Love Everybody, but Sometimes, You Just Have to Hate a Little, Too.
And, with that, I turned back to the sample lady and smiled.
“That is a delightful hair net and apron you’re wearing,” I said. “Do you have any openings? I’d like to fill out an application.”
Disneyland: A Tragedy in Four Acts
Act One: Penance, Patience, and Peanut Butter Pizza
“I don’t understand,” I said to my sister as I looked around us. “If this is the happiest place on earth, why are half the kids crying?”
It was true. Everywhere we went in Disneyland, whether it was waiting on line for a ride, waiting on line for food, or waiting on line to kiss Minnie Mouse, everywhere you looked, at least two out of five kids were sobbing, screaming, or hyperventilating, having either been recently smacked, recently yelled at, or recently threatened with being “sent back to the room.”
I, however, was having a grand time. Somehow, either I had arrived on the perfect day or I had traveled through some sort of self-esteem time warp, but I was one of the prettiest people at Disneyland. For the first time in . . . well, ever, I realized that I was currently ranking pretty high on the attractiveness scale considering my competition with the rest of the adults in the park. Now, honestly, that’s not saying much about me, but I will admit that every time I saw two honey-baked hams swinging out the armholes of a tank top, my self-esteem skyrocketed. A size sixteen anywhere else in the free world translated to a size four here, and I never felt so liberated. Free as a bird and, metaphorically speaking, weighing about the same as one, I found myself scarfing down a double ice-cream cone without shouting loud enough so that everyone could hear, “What do you mean this is ice cream? I ordered fat-free yogurt!”
I loved Disneyland. I LOVED IT. I had no idea I was going to have such a good time when my sister had asked me to accompany her and my nephew Nicholas to celebrate his fourth birthday, because initially, I really didn’t care to go. I mean, it’s Disneyland, and it has very little appeal for a childless woman in her thirties, unless her intelligence level is significantly below average. Since I’m only slightly below average, the Magic Kingdom doesn’t hold as much magic for me as it is a reminder that unless I die in a freak accident relatively soon, I will die alone, withered, and childless in a rest home unless one of my nephews takes pity on me, which I doubt, since they both find me annoying, needy, weird, and clingy, though at this point, neither one can ride a bicycle with only two wheels. Despite that reminder and also because of it, I agreed to go on this trip for two reasons:
1. I try really hard to be the cool aunt, which in the world of a childless, weird, needy, clingy woman in her thirties is called Reduced-Fat Motherhood. Just enough of a taste of parenthood that you can have the experience without all of the consequences. In our family, the responsibility lies solely with me to expose Nicholas to stimuli outside of the Time Warner/AOL, McDonald’s, and, yes, Disney minivan culture of suburban America. There are some good elements in that mix, certainly, but I wanted his horizons to be a bit broader than, say, the mall, which, you may recall, he had spent so much time at that he wanted to name his baby brother after it.
I tried my best to bring out the creative side to the kid, although some noncreative family members interpreted my goodwill as an effort to lead the boy down the wrong road, namely the one that I, myself, had taken. For his first birthday, I bought him a tambourine. For Christmas, a drum set. For his next birthday, I found a kiddie guitar. When he opened that gift, my sister sneered at me and hissed, “Why don’t you just get it over with and buy the child a bong?”
“Oh God, not bongoes,” my mother growled. “I have a big enough goddamn headache with those friggin’ drums!”
In any case, going on this trip would give me the opportunity to have fun with my nephew, bond even closer with him, and build his trust in me so that I might wield him like a puppet and mold him into the child I absolutely knew we both wanted him to be.
2. I was also at Disneyland paying penance and trying to make up for “embarrassing and traumatizing him in front of twenty of his little friends,” according to my mother, who volunteered with me a couple of months ago as a helper in Nicholas’s preschool classroom for the Harvest Festival or, what they used to call in less stringently politically correct days of yore, Halloween.
Now, I will admit that perhaps I had some responsibility in the matter, but what unfolded that afternoon was in no way entirely my fault.
After the teacher introduced me as Nicholas’s Aunt Laurie, she led my mother to a huge barrel full of dry pinto beans into which the kids would stick their hands and fish out little toys. After informing her of my creative nature, the teacher assigned me to the spiderweb table, where I was supposed to help little kids make a spiderweb on a piece of paper with glue and string. And that was all going fine until the first little girl I was supposed to help, Angelina-Charlize, didn’t want to make a spiderweb, she just wanted to write her name. I was cool with that. That was fine. No skin off my nose. Go ahead and write your name, you know? So Angelina-Charlize wrote her name, complete with a backward r. In an attempt at helping, I told her that we should try turning the r around a bit, and that’s when she and her little henchman, Sarah Jessica, openly mocked me.
“Aunt Gloria doesn’t know how to make an r,” they both chanted. “That’s so sad for a grown-up.”
“No, really, the r needs to face the other way,” I said, trying to smile. “Would you like me to show you?”
“There’s an r in my name, so I should know,” Angelina-Charlize informed me as Sarah Jessica stood behind her and giggled. “There’s no r in Aunt Gloria! Aunt Gloria can’t make an r, Aunt Gloria can’t make an r!”
“Actually, it’s Aunt Laurie, and there is an r in that, and I’ve been writing for a long time, so maybe I should know,” I retorted.
“If you know, then why can’t you make one?” Angelina-Charlize taunted me. “Because you can’t! You can’t you can’t you ca-aaan’t!”
“You know,” I wanted so desperately to tell them, “you girls keep writing in your little chimpy hieroglyphics that only a mirror can read and I’ll be more than happy to write you a recommendation to Klown Kollege when the time comes, because you will indeed need it.”
Instead, I just smiled and said, “March to your own dyslexic drum, Angelina Calista Jennifer Aniston Lopez Drew Barrymore. I just really hope you like the circus.”
That was pretty much the moment that Nicholas’s teacher came over, leaned into my ear and whispered, “Maybe we should try the play area, where it’s not so structured.”
I had been fired from the spiderweb table. I had just totally gotten fired from the spiderweb table, and unjustly so, I might add! R. R. R. See? I know which way it goes! R.
But I smiled and said okay, sure, I’ll move on to another area, that’s fine. And as I got up, I caught the glare of my mother, who was apparently the Annie Sullivan Bean Barrel Miracle Worker, the children flocking around her as if they were at a rave and she were running the light stick concession stand, all sticking their hands in the bean barrel, pulling out little candies and toys. I shook my head. How could I compete with that? Candies and toys! I had string and glue and some very complicated dynamics going on at my station. I mean, when I was assigned to that table, no one happened to mention that it was a simmering hotbed of political unrest concerning the lowercase r. A wicked web indeed.
Whatever, I said to myself, I’ll show them what I can do in the play area, I’ll show them. Much to my relief, I saw my nephew in the play area, running what appeared to be an invisible grocery store, using his creative imagination, just like his Aunt Laurie had taught him.
“And there you go,” Nicholas said to another little boy as he handed him a big fistful of air.
“Hello, sir,” I said, bending over. “I would like an apple. Do you sell apples, Nicholas?”
“Yes, I do,” Nicholas said, as he handed me absolutely nothing. “And my name is Mr.
Booley when I’m at my store.”
“Okay, Mr. Booley,” I said, looking at the empty palm of my hand. “This looks like a great apple.”
“It’s forty dollars, please,” Mr. Booley said.
I laughed. “Well, that’s a little steep, don’t you think?” I asked. “Safeway has apples for ninety-nine cents a pound, and I can actually see those!”
Mr. Booley was unmoved. “Well, then, maybe you should go to Safeway,” he said, unflinching.
“Okay, okay, I get it,” I said, putting out my hand with nothing in it. “Here’s your forty dollars.”
Mr. Booley looked at my hand, and I swear he scoffed.
“My store only takes credit cards,” he informed me.
“Did he give you a credit card?” I asked, pointing to the customer before me.
“He’s a little boy, Aunt Gloria,” Mr. Booley reminded me. “He doesn’t have credit cards. Are any of your credit cards still good?”
“I think maybe you’ve been talking to Grandma about my credit status, but let me assure you that it is almost cleared up now,” I told him. “Maybe I will go to Safeway! And you know my name is Aunt Laurie!”
“GRANDMA!” Mr. Booley yelled to my mother, who was perched over the bean barrel, getting a hug from the backward r girl. “Aunt Gloria shoplifted! She shoplifted my apple!”
“I did not! And his prices are highway robbery!” I exclaimed, trying to defend myself. “Would you pay forty bucks for an apple? Plus twenty-one percent interest? Would you?”
“Give the apple back, and don’t buy anything else from Mr. Booley’s store, do you understand?” my mother said from behind clenched teeth as the whole class turned to stare at me.
“There is no apple!” I tried to explain, showing everyone my empty, appleless hands. “You can’t steal something that doesn’t exist! There is no apple!”
“I saw her take a banana, too,” Mr. Booley’s other customer squealed.
“Maybe you’d like to cut out some paper bats over there in the corner,” Nicholas’s teacher came to me and said. “It’s a much quieter task.”