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Tales from Exit 22 by Al Batt

Everything had been nearly copacetic.

It was practically all rainbows and unicorns.

Then my wife said these words, “We should stop. I need to get just one thing.”

A chill ran up and down my spine as if it were in a NASCAR race. We were traveling to watch a family member play basketball when my wife suggested we visit a big store in a large shopping mall. We endeavor to shop locally, but there was something my wife couldn’t find in the local stores. There are few roads less traveled today and the parking lot wasn’t less parked. The traffic in the parking lot was terrible. Parked cars were stacked high. I parked in the last available space in the same zip code as the big box store and, because I love my wife and I’m a dutiful husband, I accompanied her into the den of iniquity. The traffic in the store was worse than in the lot. A crowd was to be expected on a lovely Saturday in December and overloaded shopping carts sped through uncontrolled intersections.

When I was a boy, I read books and watched old movies in which families kept their money in a sugar bowl. The interest rate was sweet. They must not have used as much sugar as my mother did. The shoppers in the big store must have raided the sugar bowl. I scaled a tall mountain, forged a raging river and waited in an endless line of shopping carts. We were a modern-day version of a wagon train headed slowly to California. There should have been a blood pressure chair at the end of every aisle.

“Al loves to shop,” said no one ever. I don’t want to go shopping, but I need to go shopping. It’s difficult to finish shopping if you don’t start. I don’t hate shopping, but if I had my druthers, I’d do even less of it. I shop without enjoying shopping or being good at it, but I do a lot of things I’m not good at. I’m good at not shopping.

There are stores I enjoy visiting, but not that mammoth emporium on that particular day. It was filled with Christmas stuff piled high on top of discounted Halloween and Thanksgiving decorations, and people packed like sardines in a can. It wasn’t a madhouse. It was more of a miffed house, like a crowded day at the State Fair. The voices of teenagers and husbands whined like chainsaws. We’re all story editors. I felt both festive and forlorn.

I wasn’t seized with anxiety or in dire straits, but I had an overwhelming desire to be elsewhere. It was remodeling a house in the midst of a crowd. I wandered about like a three-ring circus without a ringmaster. I could have looked for an ugly Christmas sweater as a gift that couldn’t be returned, but I didn’t.

It didn’t feel as if spiders were crawling all over my body because I like spiders. The line of shoppers headed to the checkout stretched the width of the store. I told my wife that Christmas was in less than a month. I wasn’t sure we’d be out of that line by then.

I asked if she’d be mad enough to add a dose of laxative to my tater tot hotdish if I didn’t wait in line with her. She assured me she wouldn’t be angry and shooed me away. I felt terrible about deserting her, but I knew I’d get over it. I wore shoes fit for running — more of a dream than a reality — and I put them to use to hasten my departure.

I could see the door to freedom when it turned into a black-and-blue Saturday. I was about to make my escape via the nearest exit when the back of my ankle was struck by a small red car disguised as a shopping cart. A hurried and harried mother had been pushing the small red car carrying a young boy behind its steering wheel. As the woman apologized profusely for the collision, I told the boy I needed to see his driver’s license and proof of insurance.

His mother laughed. The sound of laughter was redemptive. I let the driver off with a warning.

Al Batt’s columns appear in the Tribune every Wednesday.