The Perfect Song Blog

It’s Thursday, two days after Christmas.  I felt recovered enough to run the usual post-Christmas errands. I stopped in WalMart.  (WalMart is the Alpha and the Beta of consumer land).

I picked up a couple things and tried to find a line.  A group of EMTs huddled over a frail old man in a wheelchair who was having an apparent heart attack.  The other shoppers in line at the counter ahead of him looked concerned and compassionate but they were still in a hurry.

This is America, after all.

People really shouldn’t have heart attacks while shopping.  It’s so public for an experience so personal.

I paid for my things and took off because I was in a hurry, too, and the paramedics had him talking and breathing and there wasn’t anything I could do anyway.

On my way out, I mentally tapped out a quick prayer blog: God, don’t let me die in a Wal Mart.

I know what would happen.  That faceless voice would ring out over the loud speakers:

“Attention, Wal Mart Shoppers.  Apparent heart attack in aisle 15.  If you need to get to hardware, please detour through Electronics where The Da Vinci Code is on sale for $14.99.   We sell everything for less.”

If I had a heart attack in Wal Mart, I would want to do it on Christmas Eve and have enough strength to crawl out to the bell ringer so it looked like my last act was trying to give money to the Salvation Army.

God, what a legacy!  It would give the Salvation Army a whole new marketing angle.  “Please give to the needy and remember Dennis Miller – not the comedian – who died in the act of giving. If it meant that much to him, think what it should mean to you.”

What’s more American than that?

I finally started my Christmas shopping the other night. Went straight to the mall from work, rode the escalator up to the food court that overlooks the main floor of stores. I walked from restaurant to restaurant. No hot dogs, though they’re tempting. Pizza? Too bland. Chinese. Pass tonight. I wandered over to Burger King and looked over the menu.

And did the inexplicable. I ordered a Double Whopper with cheese. As the waitress handed it to me I realized the Devil does exist and he lurks at fast food restaurants. I suppose no good decision can be made at a fast food place but what I did was just plain dumb. Double Whoppers should be reserved only for football players, over-sized wrestlers and starving rednecks.

God, the thing had the heft of a bowling ball.

I sat down, unwrapped it and just shook my head. There are a lot of things wrong in America and sandwiches like this are one of them.

Two black teen guys sat kitty corner from me. The one on the left played with his cell phone as only a confident, energetic high school male can. He talked into the machine with it about six inches from his mouth. He and his friend laughed. I thought they were laughing at me but they were looking at someone behind me.

A young woman with black hair and clothes to match sat at another table, leaning back against the wall talking on her phone.

I lifted the Burger King monster to my mouth and realized I couldn’t open my jaws wide enough to take a real bite. Reddish yellow liquid drizzled lazily down my fingers. I laid it back down. This wasn’t a supper. It was an event. A sticky, sloppy, awkward event.

By the time I finished, my wrapper was a battlefield of pieces of lettuce, tomatoes, onions, teeth-mangled pickles and the reddish yellow goo formed by the combination of ketchup and creamy mayonnaise.

Goo made itself at home in my mustache and beard. My fingers were tacky.

I sat before this mess and felt embarrassed.

The two guys continued talking into the cell and laughing. I finally realized they were joking around – by cell – with one of the cooks in Burger King. I wrapped up my mess and walked past the girl in black who must have been a clerk in Macy’s or the jewelry store, one of those places that hires beautiful people, tells them to dress like a million bucks and pays them minimum wage.

“You’re a liar,” she said into the phone, smiling. “Yes. You are.” You could tell she really liked the guy she was calling a liar.

I continued on. There’s only one place to go after downing a Double Whopper with cheese.

The Men’s room. Double the soap and hold the towels. I’ll be after them shortly.

This blog is for guys.

It’s a warning if you don’t know and a reminder if you do.

Leigh and I were in my studio recording her voice over for a radio spot.  The way it’s set up is that I have the mic in a walk in closet to cut out echo and ambient noise.  Leigh’s back is to me.

I sit at my computer with the recording equipment.  My back is to her.

She read through the copy.  I didn’t like it but didn’t say anything.

Two seconds after she finished she said, “Okay, what was wrong with it?  You didn’t like something.  I can feel it.”

How many times have I heard that from a female?  How many studies have I read that show that women have this weird super sixth sense?

Here it was!  I know this has happened a hundred times in our relationship but this time it really hit home.  She could feel the fact that I wasn’t happy with her reading.

Guys, remember when you were little and your mother without even looking  told you stop  picking your nose?  She doesn’t need eyes in the back of her head.  She has the Super Sixth!

This may not help you at all as it’s really hard to control your thoughts 24/7.  Just understand, she’s reading you.

She always has.  Always will.

I turned back to my monitor and looked at the waves files.  “You’re right.  Read it again with a little more feeling.”  I hit the record button.  She read and I stared at the wave files, trying very hard to think positive.

I had a buy-one-get-one-free coupon for MacDonald’s so I drove down for a quick lunch, thinking—no.

Strike that! If I’d been thinking I wouldn’t be doing this.

My cheapness anaesthetized common sense.

As I paid for my two quarter pounders, I heard a child crying in a booth behind me. MacDonalds restaurants are open places where sounds tend to travel, bounce off walls and slam into themselves again.

That’s what was happening with this girl who, by the time I found a seat, had graduated from crying to wailing. She was into serious wailing, the kind that begins with a scream and trails off with an equally loud “ahh-ha-ha-ha.” The wail lasts until the little urchin is totally out of breath. Then she sucks in another round of air and proceeds into a repeat performance.

Sitting there with a quarter pounder that is not going down well and her sobbing wails as background music, I concluded with no doubt that there are pockets of Hell on earth and I was sitting in one.

In a perfect world, I would find the manager and ask her for a roll of duct tape. Everyone carries duct tape, even astronauts. I would go over to the young mother, and through the screams say:

“Ma’am, I would strongly recommend that you tear off a six inch strip of this duct tape and apply it to the kid’s mouth. Try not to put it on her cheeks which are soaked with tears. The tape won’t hold as well.

“If she tries to take it off, tape her hands to the table. This will keep her firmly in place and silent while you finish your lunch.

“All of us diners will very much appreciate your action as we finish our MacDonald’s meals which, if eaten for a long enough period, will shorten our lives. I would further suggest, for your own peace that after you leave, you keep the tape on this out-of-control screaming machine. In a couple hours take it off long enough to water her, then reapply it. I don’t know how long it will take to train her and I don’t want to know. In fact I never want to see or hear this kid again. Thank you, ma’am for making this fast food venture just a hair more pleasant. Here’s your tape, compliments of the manager.”

I would then return to my quarter pounder to the applause of 52 other MacDonald junkies.

But it isn’t a perfect world and I finished my burger, composed of at least seven different cows from different parts of the western hemisphere and blended to oatmeal consistency except for the occasional bits of gristle. The kid continued screaming.

I’ll probably use another buy-one-get-one free coupon but the next time I know what I’ll do to guarantee a better experience.

I’ll order at the drive through on a bitterly cold day, find a pile of barbed wire and sit naked on it while I eat in silence.

It’s December 6 and I haven’t gone Christmas shopping.

I’ll qualify that.  I’ve bought two things for Leigh online.

Other than that it’s a blank slate, an empty stocking.

We have presents to buy for brothers, nephews, nieces, parents, friends, and kids  we don’t know.

I did stop at our local mall last Saturday, which I love to do around Christmas if I don’t have to buy anything.  I love to just walk or sit and watch people who form a huge beast that takes on a life of its own as it moves upward toward Sears, shrinking by a molecule as some shoppers drop off into GNC or Kaufmann’s, growing almost immediately as it snakes around and heads downward and other people come out of Radio Shack, Burlington Coat Factory and J.C. Penney.

Take a microscope and study the huge entity and you see girls on cell phones giggling with another girlfriend about some silly thing they’ve seen.  Mothers are on cell phones checking in with the babysitter.  Men are on their phones, checking with the wife on what her size is (again) and what the difference is between wheat and beige.  (This one has always stumped me, too).

I’ve used the cell hotline myself. How did we shop before cells?

I become part of the huge entity, joining the body that’s moving south, past FYE and Victoria’s Secret sneaking a long look at the mannequins and wondering what woman in her right mind would wear these bikini briefs.  That thought is immediately replaced by the realization that there are very few women who even should wear them.

Down past two more stores. I break off the body and head into Starbucks.  I buy a coffee, sit at the counter and watch the people continue to pass.

I’ll try Christmas shopping again.

Soon.

Check out my novel, The Perfect Song at www.perfectsong.net.  Both print and audio versions are available or you can buy a copy of the book at amazon.com  All proceeds go to The Perfect Song Scholarship Fund at Mansfield University.