Nic Narrates

Registry print-out in hand, I charged into Target, plowing past the rows of carts. I’m only just getting a few baby items, I thought to myself. No need to make the trip cumbersome! On my way to the baby section, I reviewed my notes and highlighted options. I was prepared; I had pre-shopped online. I was going to put together a useful and creative “bath time” themed gift.

Once I arrived, however, I realized just how naïve that ambition was. Most of the items on my friend’s registry were nowhere to be found, and not just because baby stuff is merchandised in a way that makes zero sense. Towels and washcloths are in one place and the baby bath mat thingamajig and accessories are in another.

After going back and forth between the two aisles and finding only the powder and lotion from her registry, I figured I had three options. It was too late to buy online and have anything shipped, so I could: a) Give up, go home, and deal with it tomorrow, b) Gift card, or c) In the words of Tim Gunn, make it work.

So, I punted. I got as close as I could to what she registered for. I’d equate it to eating a Boca burger and telling yourself it’s still meat. Rather than the yellow towel set with yellow fish that she registered for; she’s getting a yellow towel set with a yellow turtle on it instead. In my head I reasoned that, Turtles swim too so that still counts, right? Of course, next to the pseudo fish- turtle towel there was an ample stock of blue and pink towel sets of what I was supposed to be buying. It mocked me. Damn blue and pink fish. Also, damn people and their refusal to find out if it’s a boy or a girl! Jerks.

Anyway, after a few more similar efforts, I managed to load up on baby lotions, powders, washcloths, towels, a duckie faucet cover, bath mat, water temperature gauge, and some contraption that keeps water out of your baby’s eyes. My arms were full, and that’s when I knew I’d made a crucial mistake. A cart! I didn’t get a cart. Shuffling about, bent backward and peering over my stash, I managed to drop every single item while on the hunt. As it turns out, not only should I not be trusted to hold babies, I should also not be trusted to hold baby accoutrements.

Eventually, I found an empty adrift cart and dropped the items down, which is precisely when some 16 and Pregnant episode contestant came out of the woodwork and yelled at me like I was stealing her car or her monies or something. Embarrassed, I feigned cart loss…. “Oh, you mean this one isn’t mine? Hmmmm….silly me. It must have wandered away. Ah ha ha ha ha…” Abort, abort, abort!

Undeterred by my failed cart ganking, I set out to find a better option and was much more successful and stealthlike the second time around. With both hands now free and flipping through the registry one last time, I steered my not-stolen-but-found cart over to the greeting card/ gift wrapping section.

Facing a wall of shiny papers and ribbons and bows and buttons and bags and just everything that a person apparently has to have in order to give a gift, I reached for the largest bag in hopes that it could hold all that I had somehow pieced together. The bag was decorated brightly with a colorful animal…a dinosaur or buffalo or something- I don’t know, it could have been a caterpillar even, I didn’t really look. The thing is, the bag refused to refold once I nixed it. And that’s when all manner of clusterfuckery happened.

Apparently, the gift bag aisle is also an up and coming thoroughfare because as I struggled with the bag, a lady rolled her overstuffed cart- bursting with storage bins- into my ankle. Before I could react or shrivel in pain, a family of four shoved past yelling in Spanish what I can only assume was, “Quick, there’s a run on baby gifts! Get the last yellow towel set, kids! Fish or turtles, doesn’t matter! I’ll corner the gift bag market!”

And then, some hipster dude sporting the saddest facial hair since Mariah Carey’s crustache in Precious, pulled up thisclose to me. I can only assume that the pastel polk-a-dot tissue paper made him thoughtful, as he gazed with a fierceness that not even my blatant stare of disgust could tear him away. I scrunched up my forehead, crinkled my nose, raised an eye brow. Still nothing. Incredulously, I threw the bag on the floor. He walked away. Meh.

I don’t know what I hoped to accomplish by eliciting a response, but in a matter of only 30 minutes I had gone from confident, prepared, unfettered career woman supporting her friend’s life choices to befuddled, butterfingered, stupid, single girl without a clue. I was frustrated and fuming and nothing would just WORK! Baby gift shopping had broken me and I’d *maturely* decided to take it out on a colorful gift bag, which I didn’t even buy.

Admittedly, I had botched the whole thing horribly, comically even. Not only did I not go to my friend’s Baby Couples Shower, but now I couldn’t even get her a proper gift. I was weak with hunger and failure, my bangs were plastered mercilessly to my forehead, and a blister had formed on my right heel. It was then that I looked down at the forlorn, deflated dinosaur-buffalo-caterpillar-mystery animal gift bag and thought; This…this is what my life has come to.

A gift bag was never so symbolic.

Filed under: city encounters, crash and burn, domesticity is overrated, friends, going postal, hateful, is janky the same thing as wonky?, Just Another Day in Crazy, people should be nicer to each other, poor choices, romper room, singletons, so what if i scream?, WTF by Nic