Shopping Fun for Christmas

My wife is out of town this week so I thought I would go out and do a little Christmas shopping. I am not one to spend time at the mall or at WalMart as I hate just ‘browsing’ and usually try to have either a list or a great idea of exactly what I am going to get. I will go into the store, head to the isles and retrieve the items I came for and head out fairly quickly.

But over last weekend some of that changed for me as I had a great time. It was so nice to wander around without any preplanned items to buy. I also decided to have a little fun with the other shoppers and the staff of the two stores I had gone to.

Here is Anchorage there is a commercial on television for ‘David Green Master Furrier’ where he has his two kids ‘sit’ while the family is shopping. Kids being kids jump up and hide in the racks of furs jumping out at each other and then are sitting down when the family returns.

I thought about that and decided to play a variation in one of the local stores. I hid like the children between the racks of clothing and when a woman would come by looking through the clothing on the racks closest to me I would jump up and down like ‘Donkey’ in the movie ‘Shrek’ yelling, "PICK ME, PICK ME!"

Everyone would jump back or scream and then start laughing embarrassed that they were caught off guard. I laughed and asked if they had seen the movie and oddly most people had seen it. After several salespeople came over to see what the commotion was I decided to go somewhere else to spread my holiday cheer.

I next made my way over to the House wares section on the far side of the store from women’s ware where I found about 30 or forty different clocks on the various shelves. I started setting about 20 of them to go off in 15 minutes followed by the rest of them to go off at 5 minute intervals over the next hour.

That was great fun to watch the different people trying to figure out which ones were going off and then shortly another group would start. It was fun because all of them had different sounds which I did not think about so it was great hearing all the ‘music’ going off around the area.

I headed next to the Men’s clothing area and looked for any signs of Hawaiian shirts or Dockers for work when I decided to try something else. I grabbed a couple pairs of pants and went into a fitting room, shut the door and waited a while. I made sure there were several people outside close by, then yelled, very loudly, "There is no toilet paper in here!" “Hey, can you help a guy out in here please!”

It took several tries before someone came up to see if everything was ok and finally one of the sales people shouted through the door that these were not restrooms in the dressing rooms that they were in the front of the store.

I waited a few minutes and made my way outside to find the very ‘friendly greeter’ I had seen on the way into the store waiting there asking me to find somewhere else to go play.

Off I went across the street to the Sportsman’s Warehouse to browse at the newest outdoor gear for those times we want to be ‘trail fit’ heading out into the Alaskan wilderness.

I looked through the fishing gear for a bit then made my way over to the hunting section and started looking at both hand guns and a few rifles. When the nice young man asked me what I liked and how it felt handling the guns, I politely asked the clerk if he knew where the antidepressants were in the store.

He quietly took the weapon away from me and put it back into the case where I could not get to them. I thanked him and headed off to other adventures.

This was a fun day and has changed my mind somewhat on going shopping. I may even try this with my wife as she asks me occasionally to go with her but she knows I hate shopping. Maybe I’ll say yes next time when she gets back in town.

Happy Holidays and don not get stressed with all of the crowds. Just have a little fun and enjoy the experience.

Ice