06 Jan A Pineapple in the Thingdom of Heaven
It was a January Saturday in South Florida. I should have known better than to attempt to buy bathroom rugs at HomeGoods on a Saturday during “Season.” The store was mobbed with ladies from Up North filling their carts with chotchkes they probably didn’t need, and HomeGoods’ chotchkes are really just cheap copies of actual chotchkes, tacky Chinese knockoffs that nobody on earth needs. And certainly stuff the earth doesn’t need. I worry that the earth will just tip over from the weight of all the inane crap we keep making and buying.
As I inched along in the checkout line, I imagined a cartoon of the whole process: hundreds of underpaid workers in Chinese factories stamping out thousands upon thousands of these unnecessary items, which are then stuffed million-fold into shipping containers on belching barges bound for Los Angeles, which are then loaded onto belching trucks bound for a thousand American points of sale like this one, then scooped up by chotchke shoppers, only to be incinerated in the solid waste facility down the street once the items lose their luster. But before that inglorious end, cha-ching go the credit card terminals at the end of the endless, profitable consumer parade in the Thingdom of Heaven.
This was my second trip to HomeGoods since I’m never a good judge of rug sizes. They inevitably look too small for the space they are intended for. I was just there the day before, purchasing the wrong size rugs, Part One. The check-out line snaked well beyond the intended store layout, with us shoppers jammed up by the colorful phone accessories, discounted post-Christmas decor and bags of jumbo gummy worms. My shopping cart was too large for the width of the aisle and my failed 3 point turn into it forced me to push my cart backwards.
A well coiffed 50ish woman joined the line behind me. She was admiring a display of pink plastic pussy willow in a plastic vase. “How darling,” she said, too loud, trying catching my eye.
She obviously hadn’t read the revulsion on my face which successfully masked thoughts about the waste and frivolity of it all. I smiled and nodded in fake agreement.
“I just love this store. But no luck today. I’ve been looking for a pineapple for my table.”
“Oh. Haven’t seen any.” (Not that I would ever be looking for a fake pineapple.)
“Don’t we just LOVE shopping?” she said with way more enthusiasm than warranted. I gave her another fake nod, mercifully withholding what I really thought.
The checkout line was fairly brisk. “Ding! Cashier Number One, please” sang the checkout robot. “Ding! Cashier Number Three, please.” The checkout line was so efficient there was hardly time to inspect any of the Temptation Alley items in the final stretch which ended with Squid Games alarm clocks and dusty boxes of baklava. I was next and the pineapple hunter was second to next.
“Look what I just found!” she gleefully announced, waving a white ceramic pineapple with painted gold leaves at me. “It’s the perfect match for my big pineapple!”
“Ding! Cashier Number Two, please” meant I was happily excused from this conversation, and soon to be released into the wild.
But as these things usually go for me, back home the new rugs were wrong again since they are always never right and I was destined for HomeGoods, Part Three. Just beyond my driveway, here come my friends Harry & Stacy out for a walk on my street. We had a brief stop-n-chat through the car window where I regaled them with my feelings about my third journey to the hellish Thingdom of Heaven and the overly enthusiastic pineapple hunter.
“Oh, she was probables trying to pick you up,” observed Harry, dryly.
“Huh?”
“Oh yea. The pineapple is code for swingers, especially an upside-down pineapple. She was probably flashing it to see how you would respond.”
“Huh…” I mentally reframed the pineapple lady with a suddenly more compelling script. Well, even though a swinging was not my thing, at least I’ve still got it!
Back in line at HomeGoods for my weekend trifecta, I found the proof that Harry was right. There, above the dusty baklava, lay the fake pineapple, upside-down.
