| Jacquielynn Floyd: Worthless? Yes, but it was on sale! 12/30/2000 By Jacquielynn Floyd / The Dallas Morning News Acting on the dubious premise that by buying a useless object at half its original price you somehow come out ahead, I went after-Christmas shopping.
We share a duty, you know, to shore up what is reported as waning confidence in the economy, to reassure those nervously watching the retail sector that we're all still secure in our commitment to keep the wheels of commerce a-rolling. Also, I love a cheap deal.
They say a kind of merciful amnesia can cloud the memory of an especially painful ordeal. I must have had a similar block that made me forget previous years when I swore off post-holiday sales forever.
I had to be reminded that it's more like combat than commerce. I spent two hours in an overheated department store, one of a crazed herd jockeying for position in the sale aisles like hyenas fighting to get at a wildebeest carcass.
I was tactically and strategically unprepared, too. It was sweltering inside my big, shaggy coat; I brought no receptacle in which to collect goods. I should have worn sneakers.
The most experienced shoppers worked in teams. The hunters waded into the fray to forage for prizes while their correspondent gatherers guarded the growing piles of merchandise off to the side.
One woman, crouched over a heap of gift wrap and ornaments, shouted directions at bullhorn volume toward her teenage daughter inside the throng: "Get the gold Santas! Get all you can! Try to find an elf!"
There were a few husbands, weighed down like sad donkeys with half-price holiday-motif towels and candles, picture frames and soup tureens, most wearing the expression of a person trying to pass a large kidney stone. Children wept and whined.
The smell of success
After a half-hour in the checkout line, I clawed my way outside with my trophies: a basket encrusted with artificial berries and a little sack of pine cones that were supposed to be scented like the balsam forests of Maine but smelled kind of like that pine kitchen disinfectant.
I used these items to construct a festive centerpiece and summoned Mike to admire the effect.
"But what's it for?" he asked, as if there were a hidden switch under the pine cones that would turn it into an onion chopper or a cigar lighter or something.
I explained that it was decorative. He just rolled his eyes, a response consistent with his belief that no home requires any decoration beyond a few hockey posters and possibly a neon beer sign.
I wasted half a day, behaved like a savage and came away with a slightly odd-looking knickknack that will take up valuable closet space and that I hope will lose its peculiar smell before next Christmas.
But I got it for half price.
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At least a dozen kind would-be donors called to offer a bicycle to Brad, a boy I met at a Boys & Girls Club Christmas party in Mesquite. His own bicycle was stolen months ago, and his folks, who are struggling to pay the bills, couldn't afford a new one this year.
Rich Crockett, with his kids and his fiancée, drove to Mesquite, tracked Brad's family down and bought him a brand-new bicycle.
"We just looked at everything under our own tree and realized we were blessed," Mr. Crockett said.
There are still plenty of kids there and at other Boys & Girls Clubs who could benefit from that kind of help. And "Spokes for Folks" is still collecting and restoring used bikes: Bike donors can watch for their new Web site, www.spokesforfolks.org, which will be up and running within the next two weeks.
Bernita Aldridge, the Mesquite club's executive director, said the Crockett family's generosity and Brad's astonished joy made it a memorable holiday.
"He was jumpin' up and down, he was so excited," she said. "It makes your heart happy to see people so selfless and to see a child that appreciative."
It makes my heart happy, too. Have a safe and festive New Year.
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