My brother Curtis is in town for a few days, and he wanted to pick up some bric-a-brac for his place. I was sitting in the kitchen throwing treats at the cats when Curtis came in holding an Ikea catalog.
"Hey John, let's go to Ikea. It'll be fun. We can go to the restaurant and have meat balls, and then we can go shopping!."
I was filled with dread. If Margaret caught wind of this, it would be an all day affair. It didn't help that at the word shopping Norton poked his head in the kitchen. "Somebody say 'shopping'?" Before you could say "Holy Shit" he and Curtis had their heads together and they were flipping pages going "ooh" and "aah" like a couple school girls.
Then it happened.
The doorbell rang.
It was Margaret.
Of course.
"What's going?" she asked. Both Curtis and Norton grinned like idiots (not a stretch) and Curtis held up the catalog. On queue Margaret clapped her hands together. "Goody! When are we going?"
I was beaten. I threw a last treat in the air, and watched as Clarence 1 jumped to try and snag it, but Clarence 2 beat him to it, only to have Clarence 3 pounce on his head and take the morsel for himself. "Let's go. We'll have to take the car, because Jimmy has the Fargo in the shop." I didn't get the reaction I'd hoped.
The "car" was an old Datsun Pulsar. It was once black, but it was now a mottled charcoal color, and only one of the pop up headlights still popped - but the best part was that the little sewing machine engine under the hood was in dire need of a gasket job. It smoked like one of those old Buck Rogers spaceships. People driving behind me had to put on their headlights to be able to see.
All I got was Norton yelling "Shotgun." and Curtis punched him in the arm hard. I love my brother.
Ikea is one of those stores that likes to be a "destination" store - which means that it's out in the middle of freakin' nowhere, and it takes forever to get there. It took even longer today, because I got pulled over by the cops. Apparently a concerned citizen called 911 because there was a car on fire driving down the freeway.
We arrived to squeals of delight from Curtis and Norton. Margaret was clapping her hands. To me it looked like a giant blue and yellow trimmed prison. I parked, unrolled the windows and left the doors unlocked (who knows, maybe someone would steal the car) and we made our way into the great Disneyland of shopping experiences.
The first thing we did was grab coffee and cinnamon buns then sat down to plan our adventure. I wished I was able to go to the ball room. But sadly not only was I too old, I was too tall even on my knees to fake my way in.
Margaret clasped my hand and snuggled into my shoulder, "This is sooooo fun." I smiled and mussed her hair, trying to let a little of her enthusiasm rub off. All told we spent four and half hours wandering around the store. We filled three yellow bags, and I have to admit I had more fun than I expected. I bought two hundred tea lights, and a really cool set of cat dishes for Clarence.
The ride home was relatively quiet - we were stuffed with meat balls. The silence was broken by Margaret, "Hey we should go out and see Mamma Mia."
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