The day my father died I wasn’t in K-Mart. I could have been. The last two years I’ve wandered the aisles buying short sleeved madras style shirts and denim jeans, and just like the madras shirts I bought in 1968, my new shirts are not wrinkle free. Though I bought so many, I don’t felt guilty or stupid because I never paid much more than four dollars.
That was then. Now, I look in my closet and I see a long rack of boring shirts that take years to iron.
This past month, and aching for a wardrobe change, I’ve been eyeing a shirt with a tropical theme. K-Mart has many varieties of these faux Hawaiian looking things, but only one I think I can live with. Not the one with the blue background and the splashy white petals, or the cow dung brown shirt with pink Nash Ramblers behind split rail fences, but the black one with smallish white orchids scattered about. This shirt would be a big change for my static-since-high-school wardrobe and it would reflect my new laid back attitude.
So, as usual, like a guy with absolutely no reason to buy yet another shirt , I stalk the rack and watch the price drop. The shirt started at a lofty fifteen dollars, but a week ago it was reduced to six and I almost pounced. I’m glad I didn’t because Friday night, there it was, scrunched up on the rack with the other summer clearance items. A buck forty-nine. Mine.
I remove it from its hanger and drape it over the side of my cart and continue my aimless stroll. I pace up and down the auto aisle, I walk back to the fizzy water section, I look for birdseed, I pass the halloween display and think what I always think – maybe I should buy a mask for this year’s camping trip – and eventually I add a couple gallons of Clorox to my cart and move to checkout. But, I’m not really ready to go home, so I leave my cart and head to headache remedies. There I pick up a travel size bottle of aspirin and return to my cart. Except, of course, like always, the goddamn thing has disappeared.
Except, of course, I don’t really know where I left it. Rat-like, I retrace my steps through the aisles but still no cart. Then I see a guy in a red K-Mart jacket standing next to a shopping basket putting two gallons of Chlorox back on the shelf. I run up to him, †I think you took my stuff.†He looks up, startled, as if I were going to punch him. I peer down and see all manner of assorted junk in his cart but no shirt. I reach down and flip through women’s underwear, bags of candy corn, magazines and plastic toys, but I don’t see my white orchids.
“I’m looking for my Hawaiian shirt. Have you seen it?†The burly guy with the mustache and the posture of a wind-tormented palm mumbles, “I don’t see no shirt.â€
No, he don’t see no shirt and neither do I. I run back to the discount rack fearing hordes have lined up to steal my bargain, and it ain’t there. I return the next day and realize it’s gone for good, but I do spy some heavily discounted plaid shirts.
