Coupon

I was so excited when my mother told me I had a coupon to use.

I wasn't sure what I wanted to buy. The coupon said "buy one VHS tape get the second one at half price." My mother would be buying the first tape (How to Strike It Rich Playing Blackjack. Dir. Dobson, Bill. Videocassette. Lucky 21 Productions, 1989.) and I would use the coupon to buy the video of my choice for half price. I was leaning towards a Ninja Turtles tape, although I wasn't sure if I already had all of those, so maybe something else.

We parked in Caldor and we just sat there. She was rubbing her temples and groaning. She had spent the past two days in Atlantic City and was nursing what I would only recognize many years later as a hangover. My baby sister was fast asleep in the back seat. After a few minutes of this, I asked her when we were going in. She groaned and handed me her wallet. "Just buy some Tylenol and come back to the car and then we'll go in together." I only took the wallet after I looked at her face and judged that she wasn't setting me up; I had never been inside a store alone. "Just get the Tylenol and come right back here and don't talk to anyone, OK? You know where the Tylenol is?" I nodded and headed for the store.

Crossing the parking lot, I wanted someone's hand to hold, but by the time I was inside, I was pretty OK.

I don't know exactly what was going on in my mind when I stepped inside that Caldor. When I was running through the parking lot, scared I was going to get kidnapped or run over or something, all I could think was "GET THE TYLENOL AND LEAVE." But then I got inside and I just didn't want to get the Tylenol anymore. This was a Caldor after all; there were way better things to do than buy one measly bottle of Tylenol and leave. I walked to the clothing section--just because it was the first thing you see in the store. I wanted a new shirt. I hadn't had a new shirt in years, even though I was growing and all. My parents just bought a mess of clothes for me when I was two or so that fit in that they hung on my body, but were many sizes too big for me, so I was still growing into everything I owned. This was intentional; I would grow into it all and they would only have to buy clothes for me every few years. But I wanted a new shirt now.

I started flipping through a rack of boy's clothes. I picked up a red shirt with a picture of some spiky-haired skateboarder giving the peace sign. He was smiling and kind of winking, ostensibly in a mildly threatening way, although it looked more like a grimace. Below the kid were the words "NO, YOU DO MY HOMEWORK!" I thought it was a pretty cool shirt. I looked over to my right and there was a little man there. I know he was a man because he had stubble and his face was covered with the marks and wrinkles and scars of old age (not actual scars, that's just a more literary way of saying "marks," I guess). Despite this, he was exactly my size, except fatter.

"I had my eyes on that shirt, kid," he said. In retrospect, I don't know why he wanted a shirt talking about homework--it seems to me that would only draw attention to the fact that he was an adult wearing a child's clothing. Regardless, I was terrified and I gave him the shirt and walked off very quickly towards the toy department.

(Now, I wonder where the man worked. I wonder if he wore tee-shirts like that to work, and if his co-workers ribbed him for it, and if he went along even though it made him feel worse about himself, because he thought the only way he could be friends with people is if he drew attention to and mocked his own disability, or whatever it was. I didn't think like that back then, obviously.)

Ah, the toy department! Here I felt at home; there would be no stunted old men hassling me about tee-shirts. I took my time going through the aisles, luxuriating in the selection, closely examining just about every toy they had on the shelf (except for the pink aisle of dolls and Barbies and whatnot, of course, which I skipped). I wasn't satisfied with anything until I had examined each and every one of its functions. This meant, for example, that I had to pull those spinning toys that make the noise of the farm animal the arrow lands on again and again until I had heard every animal.

I remember one had a deer on it. I can't tell you how bad I wanted to hear what noise a deer made. I must have stood there pulling it forever--the damn thing wouldn't land on a deer. I finally caught on that it must have been a scam and threw it back into its pile in disgust.

At the end of one of the aisles was a big bin of Ninja Turtles pencils. At the end where one would have normally found an eraser was a small snow globe of one of the turtles posing with his weapon of choice. It was just about the coolest thing I'd ever seen. It combined everything I loved in the world: Ninja Turtles, snow globes, pizza, weapons and novelty pencils. I chose a Michaelangelo (he was my favorite) pencil and shook it and shook it and watched the little flakes swirl and gather around him over and over again.

I don't know what I was doing, exactly. I guess I was trying to examine each and every angle of the thing, as if I thought its magic was somehow contained in its design, and I could learn something about Beauty by studying it closely. But the truth is they were cheaply made and the snow globe popped off the end of the pencil in my hand. My heart skipped a beat and then I heard a strange whirring sound and turned around to see what it was. It was shriveled old man in a wheelchair. He wasn't shriveled because he was old--he was probably only in his 50s. Something else had shriveled him. Trauma or disease or just plain back luck. It occurs to me now this man has probably been dead for years.

"You break it you bought it," he practically shouted. And I realized what had happened--he had witnessed me breaking the pencil! I had been caught red-handed! It was all over! I threw the pencil back into the bin with all the other ones and ran for my life, zigging and zagging through the aisles, hoping his little electric wheelchair wouldn't have the juice to maneuver after a little boy like me (he didn't actually pursue me, of course). I wasn't so naive that I thought he was going to report me to the police and throw me in jail for snapping a snow globe off a Ninja Turtles pencil. But I thought he might take justice into his own hands and do something horrible to me himself, right there in that bright white linoleum store, and I didn't want to risk it.

I ran to the back of the store and found myself near customer service. A young girl behind the counter with a bad perm (although pretty much all perms are bad perms nowadays; it may have been a very nice perm back then) asked if I needed help. I pretended I hadn't heard her, put my head down and my hands in my pockets and walked away.

At this point, I wanted to just leave, Tylenol be damned. Have my mother bring me home, where I wouldn't be accosted by people much older and larger than me who were more experienced in terrible things than I was. I looked out for the shriveled man in his wheelchair and the other guy, my size, who would be holding his red tee-shirt and prepared to book it if I saw either of them. What I saw instead was the video department.

With its big TVs and shelves upon shelves of cartoons and Nintendo games (even though I didn't own a system)--well isn't it clear I was helpless?

It was then that I remembered my mom's wallet in my pocket. It was sticking out, because I was just wearing neon green shorts with small pockets, and her wallets was one of those full-sized deals that don't fold, because she just threw it in her pocketbook. I found her coupons and, sure enough, there was the "buy one VHS tape get the second one at half price" one, right near the front.

I found her blackjack tape right near the front (I'm still not sure how, but it was right there) and was about to head for the cartoon department, when I thought--why? Why get this blackjack tape at all? You have the coupon now. You have the key to all commerce in your little pocket right now, and there's nothing your mother can do to stop you. It was probably the first evil thought I'd had in my life.

So I dropped the blackjack tape right there where I stood and picked out every cartoon tape that looked neat. It took me a while to narrow it down to two, but eventually, I pulled it off (Return of the Shredder/the Incredible Shrinking Turtles/It Came From Beneath the Sewers. Dir. Parr, Larry. Videocassette. Murakami-Wolf-Swenson, 1988. and Teenagers From Dimension X/the Cat Woman From Channel Six/Return of the Technodrome. Dir. Reaves, Michael. Videocassette. Murakami-Wolf-Swenson, 1989.).

I brought the videotapes up to the counter, presented them to the cashier and showed him the coupon. He squinted at me, then at the coupon, then at me again.

"Expired," he said. Naturally, I had no idea what that meant. "Coupon's expired," he said. "It expired in March." I still looked up at him, probably with those big, glassy look kids give you (unintentionally, I think) when something isn't going there way and they don't know why. "Look," the cashier says, pointing at the coupon. "Expires March 31, 1989. It expired yesterday. The coupon's no good, I can't accept it."

I wanted to sit down and cry. I had so much faith in this coupon. How could it fail me like this? How could the world work this way? This is how the world works, I thought. It builds you up and builds you up until you're just so happy you can't stand it anymore, and it takes it all away on some technicality. If we had come the day before, I was sure the coupon would have said "Expires March 30." Because that's the way the world works, I thought.

So I grabbed the tapes and ran without paying the guy a dime.

They were chasing me this time. And they were faster than me, of course, because my legs were so short, but I was small and agile, and I jumped through racks of clothing and weaved around boxes and this kept the distance between us.

I could see the front door. I could see it. I knew exactly where my mom's car was parked; I could imagine it already. She would see me running in front of this crowd of angry Caldor employees, open the passenger's side door and peel out of the parking lot in our big tan minivan with fake wood molding. Leave them all there, shaking their fists at us while we got away laughing, and then I would go home and watch the most satisfying six episodes of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles of my life.

I almost got all the way to the automatic door when I noticed a security guard standing there. He was speaking into his walkie talkie; "yeah, I see him," he said. I ran all the way up to him and stopped. The game was over. The clerks who had been chasing me slowed down too and stood behind me. I was caught.

"All right, kid," said the guard. "Just give me the tapes first. Then we'll talk about shoplifting and why it's wrong." He was pretty understanding, considering, which made the clerks who were panting behind me mad, I think, because they had taken the robbery personally.

I took a step forward and held the tapes out for him. He leaned over to take them and I pulled them away and ran.

They shouted and all started running after me, the whole crowd of them. And the store wasn't so crowded, so when I turned around, I saw that more of the cashiers were starting to chase me too, waved on by the first group. I knew they were faster than me, and I could only outrun them with my little tricks for so long. But if I could find my way back to that automatic door, maybe I could outrun them for long enough.

But first, I took a hard right turn and headed towards the back of the store. There was no exit in the back that I knew of, but that's where the pharmacy was, and I figured I may as well pick up some Tylenol for my mom while I was here.