So me and the wife were in Tennessee for Thanksgiving week. Around Pigeon Forge, Gatlinburg, that area. Family reunion. Stayed up in the mountains in a nice cabin. It was good times.
She's participating in a Secret Santa event with some old schoolmates, and her Santee wanted some kind of sports bag. So she looks up any local deals, since currency rates are currently so good. Well, as luck would have it, there was a sale going on at Nike and Puma outlets.
At 12:01 AM on the eve of Black Friday.
In an outlet mall.
On the only major highway in the area.
Ten miles away.
During a thunderstorm.
Our final half-mile of that drive was slower than a walk - I could have gotten out, walked on my hands, fallen over and righted myself repeatedly, and made the journey faster than we did by car. I was not really dressed for rain, and it was bitter cold.
I am not good with crowds who do not mind the people around them, and no crowd characterizes that better than a bunch of fat honkies running around trying to get a deal. Parking took fifteen minutes. I took my wife by the hand and she lead me through the rain to the Nike store. We picked out a nice bag for very cheap, considering how well-made it was. We decided to look around a bit before buying it. Walked through the rain to the Puma outlet. All the bags there sucked. We walked back.
There is something depressing about the swell of humanity that characterizes itself primarily through thriftiness on a single night, where they are characterized by excess throughout the rest of the year. There was a pressure all around me, on my skull, making my sinus pressure headache worse. Too much human sweat as we waited in line. Too many voices speaking too many vices.
We got out, prize in hand. Walked to Baskins Robbins. We bought ice cream, sat in a corner, ate together, enjoyed the barrier of relative silence provided by our projected intimacy. Not one person bothered us.
"Are you all right?" she asked, because she is sweet and tender of heart. "You're pretty tense."
"Yeah," I said, then looked around.
All around me were the kind of people who would benefit from an inward turning of their own energies, a transitioning away from vice into maintenance, into repair. These were the people who would die of small, petty, meaningless causes, of stroke and heart attack easily prevented but more easily ignored. They should be engaged, but they weren't. Could I blame them for it? No, not entirely; my heart is too soft, warmed slowly by love. They were victims, too; even the best efforts made to engage them had failed, which meant that, collectively, every advocate of health and safety and peace had failed. Does failure carry responsibility? I think it does - when you set out to do something and people are harmed by your lack of ability, then that harm must become your own, even if it would have happened without your help.
"Are you sure? What's wrong?" she said.
I sighed, thinking of failure.
"I blame Wii Fit."
