Today I shit myself

So in the scheme of the engagement, registering for gifts should be one of the best parts, right? You get to pick out a bunch of stuff you wouldn’t buy otherwise, and people give that stuff to you. I’ve heard that this process can cause a lot of arguments between engaged couples, and while that might have been true with us, the real argument was between my body and Target. Let’s start at the beginning. 

I got to sleep in today, a wonderful long sleep that lasted until 10, which is pretty good for me these days. I woke up and felt that kind of sleep drunk you get when you sleep late and walking becomes tricky.

Today we were set to complete a bunch of errands. First we had to return a book to the library, return an overdue movie, mail some late bills, make a deposit at the bank, pick up more paint at lowes and make a credit card payment there and at Home Depot (also late).

We had a wonderful lunch at Samurai Asian Fusion. I had a Philly roll and a Tuna roll. I recommend the philly roll, which is salmon, cream chese and cucumber. I highly recommend the sweet potato roll, which is nicely sweet and a bit crunchy in the middle. It’s a great “dessert” roll if you are having three.

Then we went to Target. I’ve written about my aversion to shopping before in this blog, but this was a special kind of hell, since today every newly minted freshman and his or her parents were shopping for college supplies. Shelves were empty, particularly pillows. The place was crawling with emotion – kids ready to start their new independence while contrarily relying on their parents to set them up.

Fiance and I got the scanner from the service counter after a lot of hoopla with the registry machine since she had already done a few things online. We armed ourselves with large frappachinos and a sense of dread. She’s great at lists, and had already procured a list of items from Herberger’s at one of the wedding shows we went to back in February (she’s organized like that. I would have lost it long before March).

We started in the bedding. And after much debate, had decided on a few sheets, a comforter, quilts, and all that jazz.

Sidebar: guys, you must be very delicate in this whole process. There will be many things on your registry that don’t make the slightest bit of sense. Like waffle irons. I like a good waffle as much as the next person, but cleaning them, mixing batter, and the hassle of storage space for them makes me cringe at the idea of having one. Nevertheless, there will be a waffle iron on your registry. The best you can do is resign yourself to the fact that you are going to get a lot of stuff that you don’t want to deal with, but hey, relationships!

Luckily, we both do agree on a lot of things that we don’t need, particularly duvets. Neither of us knew what the hell it was or why we would want one, yet there was a whole aisle of them to choose from. We guessed it was like a summer comforter. I tried to imagine finding space for it in the house/apartment. We agreed to skip it. (Turns out a duvet is like a sleeping bag for your comforter. Yes, your blanket needs a blanket. And its this kind of thing that makes me hate people who invent things.)

We got through the rest of the bedding stuff after much discussion and moving out of the way for others to get through on their way to higher education. Gangs of college kids roamed the store and were too hip for all this.

We started looking at the bathroom stuff, trying to figure out what color scheme to go with, and finding the selection lacking. Any color we liked would inevitably have only a few items left for scanning, and not a full set of towels, hand towels, rugs, washcloths, and so on was to be found. In a store filled with a glut of choice, there was none to be found in the bath section.

Perhaps it was poetry that my body rejected Target in the bathroom section, because it was then that I shit my pants.

Literally. 

And thus, without warning, ended our first foray into registering. I was secretly happy to have a legitimate reason to leave. Fiance was secretly happy this happened, because she hates shopping about as much as I do, and this meant we didn’t have to go get groceries after. We could go home, I could shower, finish painting the basement, and she could nap. We’d work on the registry online and go back another day.

Sidenote: Naps are the best way to escape Fargo, even just for a little bit.

I don’t have much of an ending for this, but I have known about my aversion to department stores for a long time and will just end this with a prose poem I wrote once about Walmart after reading Ginsberg’s “A Supermarket in California”

Out of food, I make my way along the streets of Megaville with the defrost melting the grayish haze on the windshield.

Once at Wal-Mart, I manhandle my cart along the piles of boxes on the ground, almost hitting the pickled herring. I stop to decide what flavor of spaghetti sauce I want tonight, Garden Chunky or Garlic Overload. Florescent lights accentuate the bulbous hips of a sweatsuit-clad woman stockpiling Ramen Noodles.

               

My Viking ancestors had the well-stocked fields of England to shop through; I have tiled aisles with twenty kinds of popcorn.  I have stores that are paved over for bigger stores to give me more options.  Like twenty-one varieties of popcorn.  Low fat, buttered, natural, salted, desalted, light butter, imitation butter extract, movie theater butter, single packs, 6-packs, 12-packs, family size, salted with butter…

I try to decide between the butter and movie theater butter – under the intercom system thanking me for choosing Wal-Mart and the monotone drone of the freezers beyond the Arizona style barbecue chips – before leaving the butter on the shelf and leaving my mule-like cart. I place the movie theater butter next to the TV dinners and walk away, past the lone cashier among the row of registers, back to the frosted car and my empty stomach.