Adventurous Shopping
1997
So I guess it happens to everybody at least once a lifetime: you get so obsessed with something that you just GOT to have it. Same happened to me that day when the postman delivered that commercial to our house. I had been hanging around the house all day, fiddling with some of the plants in the garden, helping my mom do the lawn and other stuff. Suddenly I saw a suspicious-looking guy walk up our driveway, so I decided this’d be a job for special agent double-O-oh and hid behind the bush. He walked up to the mailbox and put in a bunch of papers. I saw him walk on to the next house when I noticed that I had been hiding amongst a couple of poppy seed plants, the red ones, you know? Anyway, I fell over and hit one of the plants, which burst right in my face. I’ve never been allergic to any kind of plant, but man I can tell you, those poppy seeds DID cause an allergic reaction! The whole world started turning, colours shifted across the entire spectrum and I feared falling up into the sky. Afterwards my mom told me to stay away from her poppy seed plants, I still haven’t found out why, I mean, I didn’t even wreck it! Anyway, I walked up to the mailbox, trying to keep in a straight line on the pavement. I opened the mailbox, and there it was, hidden among all kinds of junk, the Xenos leaflet. Now I can see most of you guys wonder: What the heck is Xenos? Well, I’ll explain. Our town has always been a really boring town, when suddenly a group of filthy rich investors planned to build a big shopping centre and grow even filthier rich. All kinds of construction men have been wandering around the building area for months, but a couple of weeks ago was the big day: the Triangle (as it was called, stupid name it you ask me but okay who cares) had been officially opened. I checked out the leaflet and saw that they had an inflatable couch on sale. I don’t know if you know about those things, but man are they ever comfortable! My girlfriend had one, until it deflated while we were sitting on it… Don’t ask me how that’s possible, it just went flat. That’s all.
So now with her birthday coming up I figured I’d buy her a new inflatable couch. They had two versions, the “cheap” Inflat-a-couchtm by some cheap brand, which was available for $23,35. The more expensive version was the one on sale, a real Couch-O-Matictm by the Zonix Development Corporation which I read good reviews about. It was on sale for just $84,15 and I was determined to buy my girlfriend one. I picked up the phone and dialled the number I found in the leaflet. I heard one of those bored female voices answer the phone.
“Xenos Adventurous Shopping, can I help you?” I know that type of person, she’s probably like 20 years old, has dark hair and is probably selected because of her “telephone-voice”, one that sounds really annoying after speaking to such a person for more than ten minutes. Anyway, it took me like fifteen minutes to tell the chick that I was looking for the Couch-O-Matictm and that I was wondering if they had any in stock.
“Couch-O-Matictm ?” she said, “I’ll have to ask my boss, hold on.”
So I waited for like another five more minutes until she came back.
“Sorry, we don’t have any right now, but if you come in early tomorrow there might still be one left.” I ended the call and decided to go to bed early because I’d had to get up early the next morning.
(unfortunately, this story has never been finished)