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17 January 2008
One time I bought some pants. It was awesome. I think they were like $35. I still wear them sometimes.
OMG box! They totally were. They were made of stuffed animals!
One time my mom was shopping in Marshall's and I found a $20 bill. I had to turn it in, then, after a week when no one claimed it, I got to go back to the store and they said I could have it.
Once I learned how to drive, my mom would send me and her list to the lone grocery store in our small town (it was in a pre-fab metal building!). Invariably, she'd forget something on the list, so she would call the grocery store and have me paged or have someone track me down. (Everyone knew everyone, so they didn't really bat an eye.)
Totally sucked.
But maybe that's a story for the other thread, when it comes along.
Last night, I bought toilet paper, a can of peaches and a tin of sardines. It could have been a funnier grocery basket, I suppose. Like "condoms, irish butter and steel wool" but I didn't need those things: I needed the toilet paper and sardines (the peaches just suddenly looked *really* appealing).
One time my mom sent me to the store to get some milk, and I found a twenty dollar bill in the parking lot. That was pretty cool.
One time my mom sent me to the store to get some milk, and I lost a twenty dollar bill in the parking lot. I sat on a curb and sobbed for about 2 hours.
I once got a fortune cookie and the slip of paper said 'You'll be getting new clothes'. It was, like, totally true too! My mom and I were about to go buy a new pair of pants.
One time I bought some jeans. They were way more expensive than I would usually pay for jeans ($60) but I had a gift card from my birthday and they fit really well. They were made out of this lovely dark, thin, soft denim; this was more than 10 years ago, before "premium denim" expensive jeans were ubiquitous. I loved them and I wore them often. After about a year that thin denim wore out, right over the butt of the jeans. I went back to get another pair and they didn't sell them anymore; they were a "Special Edition Red Tag" that was only sold for a limited time. I was very sad!
Eight years later I went shopping in a thrift store. I casually browsed through the jeans rack for a minute... OMG! They had the EXACT SAME JEANS! They were, as far as I could tell, unworn! I ran to try them on... And ZOMG! They were MY SIZE! (Which was rather bigger than eight years before.) What are the chances? I went to pay and the lady ringing me up said, "I'm sorry, but only jeans with a purple tag are on sale today. So these are $4, not $2." I said, "That's just fine!"
Chewie, did you say "magic puddle, I shall visit you daily to see what further fortunes you will bring me", and then when you went back the next day, the magic puddle was gone?
Me too.
Also, why would you waste $60 on chopstick lessons?
I found a penny in a hotel parking lot last year. I still have it.
OK, there's more to the story.
It was good fortune. Just the night before I was getting ready for bed and discovered that the diamond pendant my hubby gave me was missing. He had saved "extra" money for 2 years to surprise me with it. (We were happy to share our world together - that was enough.) I spent a sleepless night, and went out early in the AM to walk and think at sunrise.
After finding the penny, I went back up to the room to pack - there on the bathroom floor somehow underneath some things was the pendant. I now have it on TWO chains. I'm NOT loosing it again!
I see your $1 and can, indeed be like Michael Jackson and "beat it!"...
This summer, I purchased a wool skirt at Marshalls for 70 cents. It had umpteen mark-downs. I'm wearing it today! I'm known as frugal or miserly and the only clothing I've paid full price for is wedding attire, cause, there's no other choice.
Now, let me tell you about the free shirts my SIL and I bought....
I found a 20 on the street in the late '70s. I felt great.
Last year I found a 20 in a parking lot. Guess what? It still felt great.
A couple of months ago I found a 20 on the floor in a grocery line. No one in the line claimed it as theirs. I (reluctantly) gave it to the cashier to turn in to the office. I felt stupid. I really could have used it. I'm betting the cashier pocketed it.
The $60 in the puddle is a true story, actually, and really was spent on the parking fee at Newark.
It was the first time I flew up to visit the future mrs chewie who lived outside of Philly. The flight was supposed to have landed at 6pm the previous day, but due to thunderstorms, delays etc etc etc, I got on the first flight out the next morning. Since mrs chewie didn't want to drive an hour home and an hour back, she just stayed at the airport.
I finally get there, we're walking to the parking lot, it's raining, so we hurried ahead of some slow folks. That's when I spotted what I thought was just a $20 in the puddle. I scarfed it up & looked at it once we were in the truck and discovered it was 3 crisp new $20's someone had probably just gotten from an atm.
We took it as a sign from the great Buddha/whatever spirit that we were meant to be.
And my chopstick skilz remain lame in spite of it all.
Once I was shopping at the Veterans Warehouse in Baltimore (that we used to call Saks North Avenue, the great, late lamented Veterans Warehouse) and my skirt fell off. I was wearing a hippie wrap skirt and tights and I knew the tights had fallen down but I thought the skirt was covering this sad fact. Until the security guard came up and said, "Hey, are you BUYING or SELLING?" and I realized that I had been shopping for some time with my whole butt sticking out in the air. That was an amazing retail experience. It was so . . retail.
Funny you should mention pants. I just got two pair of generic casual slacks for $32 each (on sale from $45, plus free shipping!) from JCPenney and even ordered them a size smaller than I was currently wearing and they fit! It makes me feel much more presentable in public (yes, the old pants were getting embarrassingly loose, and I don't want to remind myself of my girth by buying a 50+ belt).
Once I bought a ring from one of those home shopping networks - a three carat blue topaz center stone, with four rubies on each side. I came home one day, carrying one kid and groceries, during a snow storm, and once I got inside and situated, discovered the center stone was missing. I checked the bags, the house - gone. (Back then, we didn't have much, and this was really pretty and nice). Well, fast forward to a couple of weeks later. I'm sweeping the front steps from more snow, looked down in a crack in the cement, and there it was. Gleaming at me! I still love that ring, though I made sure to (eventually) have it professionally tightened up.
I found a twenty in Walgreens last week with a post-it note stuck to it (with a shopping list on it). I gave it to the employee at the photo counter and told him someone dropped it.
I then went to pay for my items, and a girl in front of me was saying to her friend "I'm sure I had it with me when I walked in here". So I asked her if she dropped a twenty, she said yes, and I told her I had just given it to the photo counter guy.
She was not as appreciative as I would have been in the same situation. A lukewarm "thanks" was it. Oh well.
photo by splunge
photo by TheophileEscargot
photo by Kronos_to_Earth
photo by ethylene
