Hunched low over my steering wheel, I’ll hit my blinker so all other cars know to back off. When these shoppers leave, their spot is mine. I’ll mumble things under my breath at the unsuspecting shoppers: “That’s it, just a little closer now. O.K., it’s that nice Dodge Neon there. Get your keys. Good. Now put your Footlocker bags in the trunk. Gooood. Now go around to the driver’s side and—NO! What are you doing!  Get in your car! Don’t walk away! Come back! Noooooo…”

Eventually, after an hour or so without success, I’ll ditch the stealthy manner altogether for a more forward approach. I roll down my window. “Hey!” I yell at shoppers. “You going to your car? You leaving?” Then I throw on my blinker and follow at their heels, often nudging their shopping bags with my bumper, across the length of the parking lot.    

This is just how it is with Easton Mall parking. You got to be cutthroat. You can’t be afraid to use your horn. You got to slip it into “survival of the fittest” mentality, because trying to land a parking space there is like playing a nightmarish game of musical chairs without chairs and a state-lotto’s chance of winning.

Once, when I dropped my wife off at Easton with orders to wait while I found a parking space, I meant I’d meet up with her in roughly two minutes. A half hour and several “where are you?” text messages later, I and a line of angry drivers were stuck in the third level of a parking garage behind an oversized Escalade with its blinker flashing, giving me welder’s eye. The driver had placed himself in quite a predicament. He’d done good work at stalking his shoppers, but when it came time for them to back out of their parking space, the Escalade, overeager to swoop in for the kill, had mistakenly pulled up too far, leaving them no room to get out.

A lot of reverse lights were happening, and we cars were already piled up against the Escalade’s bumper like Christmastime Wii shoppers inside GameStop. Every time the Escalade tried to move backward an inch, I imagined its monstrous tires rolling right over my hood. So I panicked and kicked it into reverse. The driver behind me did the same, and on and on down the line it went, until a maddening series of honks erupted from cars in the back who couldn’t see the mess we were in.

Finally, after some surprising maneuvering and the discovery of a loophole in science, the shoppers got out. The Escalade, a poor judge in dimensions and spatial matters already, apparently estimated the space it had made us all pay so dearly for was too small for its bulky frame. Instead of taking its prized spot, as we’d all rightly expected, it zipped ahead into the shadows, leaving behind a mob of drivers ready for murder. I, hit with a jolt of claustrophobia and the need to break free from the honking, revving chain of cars I’d been glued to for the past several minutes, wanted nothing more to do with that cursed parking space. I floored it out of there.     

In the end, I think I finally found a parking space on the roof of the parking garage somewhere, near the blinking apex of a radio tower. When I finally found Jess, she was wandering aimlessly with a Planet Smoothie cup in hand. “Where were you?” she asked, more out of dutiful concern than seeking a real answer. I didn’t have to say. She knew: survival of the fittest.

As we walked about the area and fell obediently into our shopper roles, and as we passed a parking lot, I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching us. Aaah, I was just being paranoid. But on the other hand, maybe, just maybe, we were being stalked.  

This school boy abandon quickly fled once I noticed my driveway buried in two feet of snow. That meant work for me. The winter version of the Biblical flood had hit Columbus, and unfortunately, someone needed to shovel. If only I had a snow shovel…

Unfortunately, I didn’t own one. If I remembered right, this was the same problem I had last winter. One measly blizzard last March, and the snow shovel shortage of the century suddenly swept the state. Lowe’s, Home Depot, Walmart – none had them in stock. I never checked, but I bet they were going on Ebay for roughly the same price as Ohio State/Michigan tickets. Store clerks laughed in my face when I asked them to direct me to the snow shovel department.

“Will any of your other locations have ‘em?” I’d ask.

“You can try,” they answered, with a tsk-tsk-tsk-like air.

I swore this would never happen to me again. Next time I’d be first in line. I’d buy mine in June. But summer came and the heat of the days made any thoughts of snow vanish. By the time fall rolled around, I’d stroll carelessly by rows of shovels at Lowe’s. There are so many; they won’t run out. Plus it’s not near snowy or wintry enough to buy one now. Maybe next week. There’s time - duped by the universal lie. To make a long story short, I never bought one.

Well, now I was paying for it. After slipping back and forth to work in my tiny Ford front-wheel drive, and after taking a series of spills in the work parking lot, straining a groin muscle, I decided to use my lunch break to finally go buy a snow shovel.

I went to Lowe’s. I Tracked through the dirty parking lot slush and slidding doors with damp pant bottoms. Wasting no time, I made a beeline for the nearest red-vested Lowe’s employee. In an aisle of snow blowers, she worked hard punching buttons on a hand-held electronic device. It resembled a chintzy, Dr. Who laser gun.

“Excuse me,” I asked, using my sorry-to-trouble-you voice. “But do you know where I can find the snow shovels?”

“All we have is in front where you walk in,” she said, still operating the Dr. Who gun. It made a beep.

Unable to remember, I probably uttered a weak joke to cover the embarrassement of having just walked right by them on my way in. I thanked her for her detailed directions and made my way over to the limbo part of the store located between the outdoor and indoor entrances. Inside, every step tripped one or both of the automatic sliding doors. I searched the area for shovels while the doors slid frantically on their rails. Open, close; open, close.  

Finally, a cardboard box of plastic handles near the indoor entrance attracted my attention. ”Snow Shovels – $20″ was scrawled in permanent market on a sign. I held my breath and gained a better look at what appeared to be sand shovels.       

Surely this isn’t all they have, I thought. The Dr. Who woman made a mistake. These aren’t even two feet long, and would easily snap under the pressure of a full load of snow. What’s the point.

As if trapped in a horror movie, I took flight for the nearest Lowe’s employee. Barely able to restrain from snatching two fists full of his red vest and demanding to know if the sand shovels were their idea of some sick joke, I calmed down just enough to ask him if that’s all they had.

“Yup,” he said, with his quality customer service mock sympathy. “We ran out earlier today.”

“Will you be getting more in?” I asked.

“I hope so,” was the only help he offered.

I tromped back to my car through the slushy parking lot, defeated, angry that I lived in a world where kiddie sand shovels could be sold for snow shovels – for $20. Later that day I found out that the weekend was suppossed to bring warm weather. This brought some relief. I would only be the neighborhood slob for a day or two, until the snow melted. And as the work day ended and I headed back home on the cleared roads, I thoroughly convinced myself that I will never let this happen to me again.        

Out the door, her only instructions to me were this: I needed to be showered and fed by the time she returned at 2p.m., and, oh yeah, don’t forget the batch of clothes that need to be folded in the dryer. On this note, I nodded, yes, yes, absolutely, yes. I had my whole day planned out in my mind, which included mainly doing whatever I pleased with the utmost productivity. I gave her a quick peck on the lips and before her car even left the driveway, I had a jumbo sized pot of coffee going. It was a boiling cauldron of energy – Starbucks Latin American Super Blend, equivalent to a mule kick to the chops. I gladly wake up with it every morning. And the rumors kicking around about it having been known to kill moderate-sized animals is exactly that – just rumors. The main thing is that the rich coffee blend boosts my productivity at least 110%, and I had a ton of unimportant things to tend to.

But something in this batch was lacking - no – draining. It made my brain heavy and my thoughts groggy. Briefly, I questioned Hugo Chavez’s hand in all of this. After launching out a few badly composed emails, trying to make sense of a book I’m reading, and thinking hard about raking the leaves still covering our yard, it was almost noon and I had nothing to show for it. My pajamas pants were still on and practically becoming a second skin, and the effects of not showering began taking its toll.

But first, I needed to take care of my stomach. I found a can of condensed bean and bacon soup hidden in the shadowy back of the kitchen cupboard. I  hoped this might snap me out of the never ending brain-fog. I pealed back the lid, turned the can over and emptied the skin-colored contents into the pot on the stove.  Except it wasn’t that easy. The soup stayed put, clinging to the tin can walls with all its stubborn might. After a series of unsuccessful shakes and taps, I got a spoon to help speed things along. I stabbed the heaving mass to loosen it up, and eventually it worked, but not without first unleashing the kind of grotesque slurping sounds only a soft, fat, furless, pink, thirsty animal could emit.

When the clumps of bacon/beans finally dropped into the pot, to tell you the truth, I wasn’t hungry. But, so much work went into it. As stated in the directions, a soup can of water followed and was stirred in with the same poor spoon I’d used earlier. After all the hard work, an overflowing bowl of it joined me at the table.  Upon closer inspection of the thick, misty soup, it made me think that this looks identical to how my brain has felt all day. 

By the time Jess got home, I was spent – showered, fed and the clothes were folded, but spent. I’d somehow managed to complete my assigned jobs fifteen minutes before Jess came through the door (which, now that I’m thinking about it, makes me wonder if I ever used soap in the shower). She lined up her shopping bags of good buys along the living room wall and asked, “What have you been doing all day?”

I kind of smiled, slightly embarrassed. I couldn’t think of one thing I did. I sort of wanted to have my day back to do all over again. But if forced to list at least one accomplishment to show for the day, I’d go with I learned some lessons about myself. One, being grossly unproductive can be quite tiring. And, two, with Twighlight Zone strangeness, I get more things done with less time to do them in than if I have all the time in the world.