Just one more purgatory to add to the pile

I was more than a bit surprised when my wife pointed to the car just after breakfast on Black Friday and flashed me that “Buckle up, Bucko” look. After all, she knew my policy about hitting the mall on the worst shopping day of the year.

My policy hadn’t changed from last year, when I told my wife in no uncertain terms, “No way, no how, never gonna happen,” when she tried to nudge me out the door on Black Friday. I felt bad being so firm with her, but sometimes a guy’s manhood depends on taking a stand. And just to make sure she got the point, I restated my policy three hours later when we got back from the mall.

That’s why I was shocked when she raised the same point again this year.

I reminded her of how crowded the stores were last year, how hard for me to maneuver her wheelchair around the aisles, how all the best advertised goods were picked over and out of stock. Besides, I had other important plans for the day.

She wanted to know what other plans I had made, and I reminded her that, among other things, all that pumpkin pie left over from the day before wasn’t going to eat itself.

Our first stop was JC Penney’s.

The traffic on the way to the mall was surprisingly light, and my heart rose with the prospect that this year’s trip to eternal hell might be no worse than a millennium-long tour of purgatory. Maybe more shoppers were buying online, or had taken advantage of sales that started days before Thanksgiving.

But when we got to the mall I saw why there were so few cars on the road: They were all in the JC Penney’s parking lot.

Finding a handicapped spot close to the store was out of the question, so we circled the lot a few zip codes away until we found a woman leaving a space on our third circuit. We pulled in and took the long roll ‘n stroll across the lot to the store.

We entered at a side door and were immediately overwhelmed by the crowd milling around, looking at luggage — LUGGAGE, for God’s sake! If Samsonite could draw a crowd like this, what would it be like when we got to the Claiborne or Chanel sections?

Once in the main aisles, my head swam with the bustle of X-chromosomal estrogenal humanity — women everywhere, their eyes ablaze with the mad passion of unbridled consumerism.

The first guy I saw wore a look on his face that had to be the mirror of my own. I was about to offer him a fist-bump to acknowledge our common dudocracy, when I realized he wasn’t just a really short guy — he was a five-year-old boy who had lost his mommy. I flagged down a security guard to handle the reuniting.

Before I left I wanted to whisper to the boy: “Always remember, this is what Black Friday is like. Never forget. Tell others.” But my wife was already careening ahead through the milling crowd like a neutron on a fission mission, so I dashed after her. I had to trust that the boy’s psychic scars would be deep enough to make him a steadfast member of the Resistance later in life.

My wife didn’t find any tops she liked at Penney’s, so we spun off for Macy’s — a store I had a no-go policy regarding, ever since they stormed from New York into Chicago, commandeered Marshall Field’s, and pulled the plug on Frango Mints. (I once declared war on Sweden for bringing IKEA to Chicago, but that pales in comparison to the jihad that Macy’s incites in me.)

Still, my wife found a $70 top at Macy’s that was going for $19.99, so I agreed to a grudging peace treaty. For now. Call it a temporary cease-fire.

Merchandise in hand, I invoked my “no marathon” rule when it comes to outings like this, and my wife nodded. “Just close your eyes as we pass by all these other stores, and we’ll make it to the car,” I said.

But as we cut back through JC Penney’s on our way to the parking lot, a pair of teenage girls swirled past, and one said to the other: “I swear, I could go jewelry shopping, like, forever-r-r-r!” She drew out the last syllable in that croaky tone of voice that teenage girls use to punctuate the ends of sentences.

But she had my wife at “jewelry.”

My wife slammed her heel into the floor, pivoting the wheelchair to follow the path to the department the teenage girls had just left.

She found a pair of earrings she liked—and I liked them, too, because we could have them for only ten bucks—so we joined another long estrogenous checkout line.

And then, at long last, we rolled ‘n strolled back across the lot, followed by a creeping line of cars desperate for a place to park. I considered opening the bidding on our space at 30 bucks so I could call it a break-even day, but I figured that American business enterprises like that probably wouldn’t become the law of the land until after January 20, so we just got in the car and headed home.

“Never again,” I said as we drove, and my wife nodded. “I mean it. This is the last time.” She nodded again — but she flashed me that same bemused look she gives me when I open a bloodshot eye and croak “Never again” on New Year’s Day.

Of course, I couldn’t admit to her that this trip hadn’t turned out all that bad. It had cost only 30 bucks, and had taken only two hours.

I pointed to the bag holding the new top and earrings. “Merry Christmas,” I ventured, pressing my luck, but her laughter implied there would be other purgatories waiting for me over the next few weeks. Dammit.

Anyway, my heart rose when she let me drive past Arby’s and go home for lunch, where that pumpkin pie had been calling my name, like, forever-r-r-r.

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