The holiday spirit certainly does not seem to exist when it comes to holiday shopping.
I had to go shopping yesterday afternoon to pick up a few things I needed for Christmas. I usually avoid any store like the plague from the day after Thanksgiving until the middle of January. But I decided to give it a shot and hope that my experience was better than in previous years.
It wasn't.
The store was packed and extremely difficult to navigate for someone walking, let alone someone driving. I'm used to the looks, the stares, the rude comments and the pushy people. But all these things seem to double when people are caught up in the "spirit of the season."
There were clothes strewn all over the aisles and no associate could be found to help gather them up and clear a path for me. People pushed their way in front of me to grab things that I was reaching for. I was looking at a display of earrings when a man decided to reach over my head to get some. There was also the woman who thought that the handlebars on my chair were the perfect place to hang her discarded clothing items.
These incidents were nothing compared to what happened when I went to the store a few weeks ago to get ingredients for my Thanksgiving pies and a few early Christmas cards that needed to be sent overseas. To preface this, I need t say that I don't usually turn off my wheelchaie unless I am reaching for something like an article of clothing. While I was looking at the display of holiday cards, I actually had one woman reach for the control box on my chair and before I could stop her, she backed me up about three feet. When I slapped her hand away and asked her what she was doing, she replied, "You were in my way."
The only good part of my shopping excursion yesterday, besides my new clothes (yay), was that no one had parked us in in the parking lot and we were able to get in my van and get home without having to call security to get the cars moved.
And with the 15 degree weather and the 23rd hour of continuously falling snow, that was a very good thing.
