November 14, 1997 - Friday

For the past few weeks or maybe months I had been obsessed with roller skates. It seemed like people kept talking about them, and I was having dreams about skating and fond reminisces of going around and around the rink to the strains of "New Moon on Monday."
So of course I knew I had to buy some skates.

It turned out that Academy was the only store that carried the old-fashioned kind with four chunky wheels securely attached to the corners of the sole - not four scarily-tapered ones lined up in the middle, gleefully waiting to break your ankle.

I hate it when I go to a store and it looks dingy. It's probably some kind of cheap lightbulbs that make it seem like there is hidden grime behind every shelf and secret grief in every employee's heart.
I don't know if Academy is a national chain, but in case it's not or in case you quite understandably never had the desire to enter an Academy establishment, I will explain that it's basically a sporting goods store that also to carries boots. That's cowboy boots, for y'all non-Texans. Here we just call them boots. No qualifier is necessary.

The Academy was in a part of town which used to be the suburbs and therefore quite nice, but Austin keeps growing and sometimes shopping centers without a Bed, Bath & Beyond get trampled and forgotten. I mean the store was shabby and deserted. It was a rainy Wednesday morning.
The only customers were small packs of boy-men in dirty, dark jackets and nappy, knitted hats. I only looked once and saw a smattering of earrings and hydrogen-peroxide-orange-streaked hair. Posers. Losers. They snickered and gesticulated widely.

So the Houston girl in me had to quickly compose a defense phrase and put it on the tip of my tongue, ready for any smart-aleck remarks. I chose "Fuck off, freak." But fortunately I didn't have to use it, so I went on to the aisle of skates.

We got a good laugh out of the only non-in-line skates they had. I put my choice - black with flourescent green trim - in the cart and smiled again, happy to wait until the next day. Hopefully it wouldn't be raining and I'd happily suffer public humiliation, skating in a parking lot near my home.

***

Okay, now I'm getting on my own nerves, so I'll just tell y'all what happened in a plain old way.

My son had to go to the bathroom. It was up a dark flight of stairs. He was afraid and screamed and fell down a few steps. There was a big plastic deer on a table in front of us. A woman had two carts full of price stickers blocking the aisle. The snickering guys were circling the store. I wondered what the hell they were doing there. Crusising for chicks? Stealing? Looking for pre-worn knitted caps? I knew they were really there because they had nothing better to do. It was sad but they still got on my nerves.
Testy words to an ignorant clerk, passing a marked-down Buns of Steel, screech of brakes in the parking lot as my child falls down again.

I don't know why I let little things get me down sometimes. All of a sudden I felt like I shouldn't have bought the skates at all. I looked to my husband for a cheery word and he said "You should've got elbow pads coz you're gonna be bustin' your ass."

And I just said "I know," because it was, like, such a fitting metaphor for life.

Haw, haw.

But I really feel like if Academy's lightbulbs had been a little brighter, and maybe if they'd had some adult contemporary on low, I would have worn my skates out of the store.

It's just like the other day...
I'd finally gotten a chance to go shopping alone. But it was Sunday and Hancock Fabrics wasn't open until noon, so I ended up burning an hour at a place called MacFrugal's, which is pretty dark and seedy, but it wasn't raining and I got some bargains, so I didn't mind.

Then I might have gone to Clothworld, which was right next door. I probably did. Sometimes fabric-shopping is an expensive blur for me, so I'm not sure.

But I do know that as I was pulling out of my parking space, I saw a new little bakery in the corner of the shopping center. I immediately thought "Hey! Bakery! Yeah!" But then I looked at the tiny dark windows, which were completely covered with huge, drippily-painted, red and orange letters that said stuff like "Sunshine Bakery - We Have Donuts - Come Inside, Sale" or some such inane things, and all of a sudden I just wanted to drive the hell out of there.

When I was little I had this recurring dream about a bakery. You got to it by riding a roller coaster through a dark stone tunnel. The only light in the bakery came from the rotating display cases. There were no clerks. In the dream, I could never resist going into the bakery and helping myself to a brownie. When I reached for it, I would notice white icing being smudged into the chocolate with an invisible finger, into the shape of a cross or an X.
Suddenly I would know that the bakery belonged to the Devil.

Doh!

Now I realize that dream was the product of too many scary movies, a cantankerously religious grandmother, and the whole food-is-love upbringing.
But I don't know if it worked or not. I guess not. I don't worship Satan, but I'm not religious at all. I still like brownies, I'm ambivalent to roller coasters, and I have yet to use my skates.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, I like it when stores have bright lights. And that life is a continuous struggle on many levels. And that maybe I need to go out into the sun and get some exercise.

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