The Blue Light Special

On my BIG list, of things I envision in our life as the Cleavers, has always been a ping pong table. Why? Damned if I know.

Pool table? Nice, but honestly, you have to have an epic room to have a pool table set up (because no, it will NOT be the centerpiece of the living room). A ping pong table is good clean fun (and pool can be so very dirty...) and would also get Big O and the Honey something that is neither sport NOR Video game.

At our old house a ping pong table was never an option, but this house has a porch that is crying out for a folding green table. With small rubberized paddles (stop that) and featherweight balls that wouldn't damage anything if they got away.

So it seemed like destiny when KMART had a one day special on Friday. Eighty bucks for my slice of the american dream. Now, friends, eighty bucks is nothing--Except for the ever hovering spectre of abject poverty that flashes at the sides of my vision like some evil ghost of christmas future. But Kmart, my friends, specializes in abject poverty. They gots them the lay away. Sheeee-it.

So off I went to squander the extra hour I had, because work let us off early to prepare for the Christmas party. An hour should be long enough to put one item on the lay away, no?

Aw, HELLS NO, y'all.

This is the Central Valley, and I was goin' to the Southside. Unlike the northside Kmart, which they tore down to build a lovely Eddie Bauer/J Jill/ REI complex more in keeping with the Northside's yuppie ideal, southside has their lay away in the same hallway as the bathrooms. Because really, who doesn't want to stand in line as the great unwashed brush much too close to you on their way to and from the facilities?

For the entertainment of the masses, let me present the family Crack. Mama crack needs a bath. A toothbrush. Some basic hygeine. She's waiting for the clerk to fetch her christmas goods from the lay away. I know how to say it now. It's The Lay Away. Daddy Crack is there to move the basket around in random patterns while waiting for the clerk to fill it up. Uncle Crack is bitching about the injuries he got in Iraq--they all think that's hilarious. Oh, he was also in Vietnam and Korea. Uncle Crack looks maybe forty--which means he is probably twenty five in human years, and fifty in crack years. Look! Here comes grandma Crack, who drops off crack baby, because he needs to go. Mama Crack think it's hilarious to shove him into the men's room and kick him in the ass on his way in. She could have been punting a football. Bitch. He's maybe five or six. The clerk has come back with their stuff (finally) and they are poring over their stuff (and props to Crack Parents, they have made sure their kids are getting Christmas). As the clerk disappears to find the next pile of stuff, the sounds of crying come from the bathroom.

"Moooommmaaa.... Moooooommmmmaaaaaa!"

Mama Crack is joking with uncle Crack, and ignores the cries.

"Momma, help meeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!"

"WHAAT?"

"IT'S stuuuuck!"

"AAAAAAAIIIIIIII!!!!!!!"

Now he's really screaming.


AAAAIIIIII!!!! IT's Stuck in my butt! MAMA!!!! THE DOOKIE IS STUCK IN MY BUUUUTT!!!!!

MAAAAAAMMAAAAAAAA...The dookie is stuck in my buuuuuuuuuutttt!


I was trapped for almost my entire bonus hour with the family Crack, and the dookie was stuck in his butt.

But my freaking ping pong table is on The Lay Away. I'm so sending the Honey to pick it up.