Hardware Store Week. Day 1

With the nature of my business I spend a whole lotta time in hardware stores and the likes of Home Depot and Lowes as well. In the course of hanging out in these fine and not so fine establishments I've witnessed and been part of some pretty interesting things...and I'm just gonna dedicate this whole week to the revelations of some of these.

I seem to be able to ingrain myself in my community with stories that start with "Did you hear about Jace...." with some regularity. My feelings on that, "It's good to be regular". Keeps Grape Nuts and Milk of Magnesia in business and cousin, that's good enough for me! And with that, I'll stay on the same note and give you the one thats' asked about the most.

A couple of winters ago, Sal and I are in Columbia and I return some stuff to Home Depot once again and buy some other stuff and get the now obligatory 2 foot long receipts in duplicate and a sales receipt. We leave and go to Lowes.

We walk into Lowes and upon hitting the doors of the store I have a call to nature that falls into the category of "more than quite urgent". I do a trippy little half stride half scoot, sweaty speed walk, pause... and then tiptoe clench walk some more, to the far far far far corner of the store, where the restrooms are located, just in the nick of time, and do what I went there for.

I have never in my life seen, before or since what I saw in that stall at that moment. Freddy Krueger and Hannibal Lechter could have been standing on either side of me, locked up in a kiss with one another and it wouldn't have frightened me as bad as what lay before me.

The huge double 10 pound rolls of toilet paper that should be there.... are not.

The first situation is over. A second situation has taken the lead and I'm unarmed as the case may be.

Back in the days of little rolls of TP in public restrooms, I always checked for a roll of paper before entering. Now in modern times nearly every public room in the country has 20 pounds of harsh TP hanging in the stall. Rolls so immense they hardly turn by just pulling on the paper, you have to reach up inside the dispenser to help 'em spin or you just get one sheet of paper at a time.

Now men have a code of silence in restrooms, we don't speak to one another for whatever reason, we don't socialize, gather, or hang out in the restroom... so asking someone else in there to hand me some toilet paper is 147% out of the question. So I sit there thinking... and remember the receipts from Home Depot that are wadded up in my hooded sweatshirt pocket.

I pull them out of my pocket and examine them and contemplate very carefully about what I'm about to do. If I remember correctly, I think I prayed over them as well.

I know that there is most assuredly some sort of deep anti-commercial meaning with how I used those receipts from Home Depot in a Lowes bathroom, but I don't think you'll find many sociologists that will spend a lot of their time doing a study on it.

If you really gotta know, yes... it got me to the next stall where there were 2 full 10 pound rolls of paper.

I became legend in my community in less than a week. Thank you Sally.

Here's to a great week! :-)
J.