We have forty stuffed animals. Forty! That's not including my Beanie Babies, the Dilbert and Alice and Catbert soft toys, or the plastic dinosaurs. Does any normal person need eight wooly mammoths, five elephants, five penguins, three warthogs, two bison, a lion, a beaver, a rhino, a hedgehog, a hippo, an armadillo, an orangutan, a lobster, and a polar bear plus assorted disreputable-looking teddy bears and dinosaurs? I think not.
What is more disturbing is as I unpacked all the stuffed animals tonight I could identify each one by name even though I never refer to them that way normally. I don't talk to them, or take them with me to conventions and torture my friends by perching a dragon on my shoulder and forcing the friends to pretend my dragon can talk, or anything daft (and if you think that sounds odd let me tell you such things are staples of science fiction fandom). If I have to refer to them, I usually say "the rhino" or "one of the little elephants." And yet I gave some of the stuffed animals names which I can recall instantly even years later. Naming things is a particular pleasure of mine, but I never give machines names. No car, computer, or coffee maker has ever been nicknamed by me. Animals, yes. Stuffed animals, yes. Friends, yes. Everything soft and huggable gets named.
The highlight of my evening was not, however, unpacking the ridiculously cute stuffed animals but going out to Target and buying a lampshade. Pathetic to you, a triumph to me. I have been meaning to buy a lampshade for the last 18 months, okay? So picture me, lampshade in hand, ready to write my check at the counter being manned by some hapless underpaid clerk, when over the loudspeaker comes the following exchange.
"Store manager, aisle 10. Store manager, please come to aisle 10."
"Can't leave the cash register, Jose, what is it?"
(Long pause.) "Can customers try on the lingerie?"
In a stage whisper I immediately suggest, "Say no! Say no!" The clerk stops ringing me up to listen in horrified fascination.
"I don't think we have a policy on that, Jose. Probably not though."
(Clicking on and off of microphone with lots of feedback.) "Uh, what if they promise to leave their own underwear on?"
Entire line at register including me: "No!"
I took my lampshade and escaped before the customer started stripping down in defiance of the arcane rules against trying on undies at Target. Really, it's a good thing I leave the house occasionally. It reminds me that I'm not the only nutball on the planet.
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