Dateline: COSTCO Universe. Okay, you’re right. I published Episode Three, before Episode Two, Which is what Costco can do to your mind. In case this is too confusing, I’ll repost Episode Three again after Episode Two…that is right, right?
Note: To truly understand the depth of shopping pathology and stress on this adventure, you must have read Episode 1. In fact, you’d do well to read it before lowering yourself into the hell that is BIG STORE SHOPPING.
The automatic doors whoosh open and I’m in COSTCO Universe.
After fifteen minutes with my head bent backwards between my shoulder blades, staring up at three-story stacks of food and furniture–I’m checking hospital supplies for a traction machine. “Where are the candy bars?” I ask a couple of attendants in pretty good Spanish. They both shrug and roll their eyes to the ceiling which looms eight stories above the entire store. I trudge on. I can do this. Just one chocolate bar, say 60% cocoa. I pass sofas stacked to the ceiling, barbeque pits, compact cars, and life size Barbie dolls, and vats of Chinese food–everything that is for sale anywhere in the world.
I’d promised the taxi driver outside that I’d pop back out of the store a couple of minutes. Five tops. Right. I didn’t have the faintest idea where that entrance/exit that I promised to pop out of was. The taxi driver would have split, I’m sure, had not my special person opted to wait in the car. Ah, yes. He loves it when I do things like this–things like leaving him in a cab with an angry Mexican taxi driver who speaks no English.
Oh, well. I wasn’t giving up. At any moment, I’d turn a corner, and there would be that friendly candy counter with a selection of chocolate bars, 50%, at least.
But no. The closest I came to chocolate was a crate of Cocoa Puffs. Finally, after about twenty minutes, I promised myself that the next time I wasn’t lost, I’d slink out of the store. But then as I launched my escape, I spotted a pyramid of giant plastic jars of chocolate covered almonds. Yes, it was not any %, but I’m in withdrawal. I understand why alcoholics will drink perfume if it’s the only alcohol in the house.
I hoist a jar up on one shoulder, pay out and rescue the taxi.
We return to the resort, I pop open the jar using my toothbrush as a crowbar, and eat two handfuls, one at a time. The chocolate has been cut so many times I can’t barely feel it. Maybe if I ate 20, 5% cocoa, I’d end up with the percent I needed. I give it go. Maybe if I ate 40…
I repeated this unsavory process once or twice a day for a week. When we left, the jar was ¾ full. I think the little almonds breed at night. I knew I did not want to smuggle the rest of the stash through customs. I do not want to ever see a chocolate covered almond again. Next: The Truth about the IKEA Virgin.
