I Break for Ninja Grammas (Suzanne Forster)

It seems the blogger.com gremlins had their way with my last post. I got one error message after another while trying to publish it. Don’t you just love error messages? That’s a blog in itself. These particular messages went on throughout the night and into the next morning. Every time I tried to post I got one, and I finally gave up on ever getting the blooming thing published. I decided either the blogging gods were unhappy with me, or more realistically, the server was down.

Silly me. Apparently blogger was just waiting for me to admit defeat. At some point after I signed off, lightning struck, not once but several times. Multiple versions of the post appeared. Feast or famine! One of my fellow storybroads noticed the multiples and very kindly cleaned up the mess. Otherwise you would have been wading through at least four copies of “What’s Worse than a Lump of Coal at Christmas?” One was more than enough, trust me, lol. But then, one of our Storybroad readers told me that some of your comments may have been lost in the process, so if you left a note and didn’t hear back from me, my apologies. It was the gremlins.

If you missed the post altogether, I can bring you up to date in a flash. I’m still fighting a tight deadline on my revisions and the thundering hordes at the mall. Have any of you noticed that Christmas shopping is an extreme sport? Aiyiyi.
I have shopping war stories. Boy, do I have shopping war stories, but due to limited space I’ll hold it down to one. I’d love to hear yours too.

I call mine “Ninja Gramma.” Here goes. It had been one of those freakishly long days of shopping, and I was nearing the numbed, walking into walls stage, but I’d finally made it to the last present on my list. My heart sank when I saw the crowds swarming the checkout counter. There were two lines, one for each of the two clerks at the counter. I picked what looked like the shortest line, aware of the petite lady across from me. She had lots of curly salt and pepper hair and two cute youngsters in tow. Despite her load of packages, she looked in far better shape than I felt, but I realize now that it was probably due to Mall Rage, a highly contagious condition that seems to afflict people the closer it gets to Christmas.

“I think there’s only one line,” she told me. The fierce glint in her eye should have warned me what was coming, but I was too weary to see it. I thought she was asking me a question. I pointed out that there were in fact two lines, one for each clerk. This seemed obvious to me, but not to her, not at all. The people in front of me were a family group, and once they had checked out I would be next. The people ahead of her were individuals, and I was going to get to the counter before she did. She wanted my spot.

What to do? I thought about standing my ground. But I didn’t want to set a bad example for the kids, who were peeking out from behind her coat and looking up at me with wide eyes. So, when the family in front of me was done, I stood back and waved her toward the counter. Possibly I thought she was testing me and would graciously decline my polite gesture. She did no such thing. I think that’s when I got steamed. Wait a darn minute. There wasn’t one line. There had never been one line, and she knew it as well as I did. That wiley gramma coyote had psyched me out of my spot.

When I finally did get to the counter, the clerk gave me a conspiratorial smile. “You were ahead of her, you know,” she said. Thanks for telling me now!

I managed a smile-like grimace, still taking the high road. But believe you me, if Ninja Gramma hadn’t had the kidlets in tow, I might have thrown down. Choose your weapons, woman. Mud wrestling at dawn? I’m there! Hey, I have grandkids too.

Actually, some good did come out of my mall excursions, and for the strangest of reasons. Life is so often strange. I much prefer strange and wonderful. Why doesn’t that combo come up more often? But I did luck out and have a couple such experiences this holiday season—and they were brought about by that most dreaded of problems called cash flow. Possibly you’ve felt the pain? That’s when more money goes out than comes in. Well, it’s been one of those years for me, and it forced me to think long and hard about my Christmas budget.

I’m happy to say that everyone who got a present last year got one this year too, but a great deal more thought went into the choices. Instead of buying my grandkids expensive toys that might last a week, frivolous stuff at best, I decided to give them books that would spark their imaginations for years to come. Certainly books can be both frivolous and expensive. That’s what’s so wonderful about them. Books can be anything. They’re a very personal gift. You really have to think about the person for whom you’re buying a book.

I loitered for a long time in the romance section checking out the latest romantic suspense novels for my daughter in law. She reads mine, bless her heart, so I was confident she would enjoy other authors. I had two picked out when a thought struck me. Maybe I should make a quick trip to the psychology section. She also likes self-help books. That’s where I found Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus.

I read John Gray’s book a few years back, and lasers zoomed through areas of my brain where only darkness had resided. If my daughter in law has even a fraction of the light bulb moments I had, the book will be worth every moment of her time. Of course, I told her to have my son read it right after she does. It’s really for him anyway, lol. We women already know what Gray has to say about us.

Here’s wishing all of you lots of strange and wonderful experiences this holiday season. As the song says may your days be merry and bright!

Suz