HOME DEPOT

You can send me to jail, but please, don't send me to Home Depot.

I entered the Hall of Horrors last Thursday and was greeted by a nice woman with a smile and clipboard. Being as she was greeting me I asked if she could tell me where I could find some picture frame hooks and saw tooth hangers. "I am sending you to hardware", then lifting her clipboard thumbed through the pages and said: "Aisle 13."

Aisle 13! I should have known, lucky aisle 13, where they hide everything when I enter the store. If you've ever been on aisle 13, it is a long sorry place, devoted to lost souls who drift up and down the aisle, sometimes for days.

I begin my tour by giving it a general once over where millions of products attack your senses, and this is only one shelf. Slowly, I pan the shelves, looking at each piece of merchandize and wonder if I've passed it yet. After the second-time down Lucky 13, I decided to slow way down and look for the packaging with peeled eyes. The problem is that now I am tired, my back went out and I think was waiting in the car for me, when suddenly I hear a sigh! Looking up I see another poor soul, adrift in a sea of haze, fog, and confusion, trying to get off the island so to speak. Our eyes meet and we exchange angst, trading one horror story for another.

"How long you been trying?" I inquire.

"Well, I've been up and down this aisle a few times already! You?"

"Since Tuesday of last week."

"Wow! You didn't get out at all?!"

"Right you are, I'm hungry, gotta pee and very tired, plus my wife will start to miss me if I'm away more than a few days!"

I explain what I'm looking for and we both start to look, slowly, but not the bottom shelves, our backs hurt. Suddenly this kind and friendly gentleman disappears and I stand there, wondering, what happened to my new close and personal friend?

Drifting back in a daze, I freeze when suddenly I see a woman come racing over, almost out of breath she says she understands I'm looking for something. "I heard you are looking for something, let me show you where it" and leads me to aisle 12. I was being freed from aisle 13!  I might be home in time for Christmas! But will it be in time to shop?

Taking me directly to the items I needed she says, "I rescued you!"