Jekyll and Hyde Go Shopping
There is a healing quality to rage, which I experienced the other day while shopping. I almost threw a baby at its mother.
It happened in Macy’s in Woodland Hills, in a section of the store I am not at liberty to reveal. If I did, it would indicate what I am buying my wife for Christmas.
Normally I shop for her in the tool department at Sears. Last year I gave her the half-inch drill she has always wanted. But I think she has enough tools to last for a while. So I ended up at Macy’s, circling the parking lot like a buzzard over road kill, looking for an open space. After about 20 minutes, I beat out an old lady for a spot and walked into Macy’s.
It was a journey into hell.
I am glad the economy is booming, and I am glad that people are feeling good enough about their financial positions to spend money for gifts. I just wish they’d do it when I’m not in the store.
Oh, such crowds. Women were in the forefront, pushing their way to the sales tables with the energy of Atlas missiles, while the men trailed behind, looking lost and bewildered. One wore a T-shirt that said, “Real Men Don’t Shop.”
Normally, I am a docile shopper, but Darwin’s theory is applicable during the holidays and I fully intended not only to survive but to prevail. I pushed my way to the item I wanted and then pushed my way to the checkout stand, only one woman away from the cash register. That’s when the woman in front of me handed me her baby.
*
The checkout stand was like the final day of the Vietnam War, when people pushed screaming and crying at the gates of the American Consulate to board the last helicopter out of Saigon. Fear and desperation were in the air.
In the crush, I was handed the baby. It was a boy. I like babies and I don’t mind holding one for a while, as long as they don’t have to be fed, bathed, burped, raised or re-diapered.
But I felt that the mother had, in the confusion of buying, probably mistaken me for the baby’s father, who should have been right behind her but instead, unknown to her, was wisely on his way to Tahiti or to Tonga.
“I’m sorry,” I said very kindly, “but I think you’ve made a mistake.”
“I was first in line!” she said.
“That’s not what I mean,” I said. “I have your baby.”
She was busy pulling a credit card from her purse and only glanced at me.
“I know,” she replied with some irritation.
I think I could have shouted, “A dingo dog has your baby!” and her attitude would have remained the same.
“You just hand your baby to a stranger?” I said.
“Would it kill you to hold him for just a second?”
It was then I felt the surge of rage.
*
Anger and incredulity darkened my appearance. Nothing transforms a man like confusion. I was the kindly Dr. Jekyll metamorphosing into the hideous Mr. Hyde. I could almost feel hair covering my body, my snout extending and my ears tapering to a point. No, wait, I think I’m confusing Hyde with a werewolf. It doesn’t matter. Anyway, I was damned mad.
“Lady,” I roared, “take back your baby!”
I held the infant in such a way that it appeared I might shove him toward her in a manner reminiscent of Joe Montana’s little shovel pass.
“Oh, all right!” she said, exasperated, as though holding her baby was my job and I wasn’t doing it well. But even then she took the time to put her credit card away, leaving me poised in mid-pass.
She finally took the baby back, gave me a frigid glance and said, “Thanks a lot.”
The rage I had felt disappeared. Hyde became Jekyll again. Drool dried on my chin.
I would not have actually thrown the baby. And I would not have, even as Hyde, leaped on the mother’s back and gnawed at her head. But for a moment I was angrier than I’d been since Eddie left Debbie for Liz.
As I walked away from the checkout stand I noticed that others who had heard my roar opened a path for me, not sure what I might do. Like Moses, I had parted the crowds and it felt good. I have Mr. Hyde to thank for that. He’s what a male shopper ought to be.
*
Al Martinez’s column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. He can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com.
