Arg. Coconut.

Who knew there were that many Christmas albums by country artists? Every day someone calls and asks me for another different one. If anyone out there has Oak Ridge Boys Christmas Cookies get on eBay with it right now... somebody's a-lookin for it!!!

A couple of other favourite Xmessy interactions were the guy who came in looking for music "for the wife" who apparently is into "hip-hop be-bop." When I confessed to never having heard of this type of music he clarified with the more concrete terminology of "dance shit." He left with a Ray Charles and a Basement Jaxx CD.

Another grave lady called up asking if we had anything in stock by The War Brides. I said we had nothing in stock but we might be able to get something in for her. I then asked if they were a local band (figuring she might be shopping for some glam metal band from Penniac to give to her grandson, or something). She took a deep breath and informed me... "They are NOT a local band. I'm referring to The War Brides... [dramatic pause]... OF CANADA. Ah.

Since I rarely go to the malls I seldom have to deal with the weird bulldog-like behaviour the holiday brings out in people. Today though, I took a fifteen minute break to get lunch and grab a new notebook from Shopper's Drug Mart in Kings Place to keep track of special orders. There was only one cashier line open and two people ahead of me. I hadn't gotten food yet, but this looked like a short wait. Just as I was thinking this the lady just ahead of me reached into her huge stringy shopping sack and yanked out a wrinkled and knotted Shopper's bag from an earlier visit. The thing was you see... she'd been in on Saturday and bought some Pot of Gold chocolates that were on special. BUT... when she got home she realized she had bought the brown box... and, you know, those are nuts. She didn't like nuts. So... she'd come in a grabbed a white box... and, you know, those are just milk chocolate (or something). She really wanted a black box... but they were, you know, all out. So... the cashier (who was male and sported a Shopper's name tag that advertised his name was Jonni [his spelling, not mine]) struggled, and struggled, and struggle to untie the top of this bag (why the fuck do people tie the tops of bags that only contain large rectangular objects that will never in a million year slip out?) while my brain screamed at him SCISSORS. SCISSORS. SCISSORS!!!. Finally Jonni got the bag open and pulled out the receipt and told the lady, "the other box was $3.99... this box is $4.99." To this she countered, "I called and the girl said I could just swap them." While all this was going on the line behind me had begun to stretch out to near the back of the store... so a "supervisory cashier" came along to open another till. The Supervisor told Jonni that he'd have to fill out a refund slip then ring the new box in at the sale price and then bob's your uncle. Then he wandered away. Jonni filled in the refund slip... something that involved a handwritten document... then he moved on to the ringing in the sale price. BUT... the supervisor had taken the returned box away when he left, which Jonni apparently needed to re-swipe the UPC (or some shit). So he runs to the back of the store, gets the brown box, swipes it, then looks at the white box for what seems like a very long time. He swipes it, and it comes up at $4.99... because... obviously... it isn't on sale... the sale was on Saturday. It should be mentioned that all this time the lady, mid-60s, weird backwoods accent, is offering all sorts of non-helpful suggestions that are only further confusing poor Jonni. Finally, with the help of two other cashiers, a ring of keys and a new spool of register paper... they arrive at the novel solution for getting the $4.99 box of chocolates to be $3.99... they ring it in manually!!!! Somewhere outside a tenament apartment a small crippled child named Tim was weeping tears of joy!!!

So next time someone tells you life is like a box of chocolates... get out of line.