The box!

Getting older is something we all ignore, even though the signs are there. As Bryan Adams famously declared ©:

I wanna be young the rest of my life
never say no - try anything twice
til the angels come and ask me to fly
I'm gonna be 18 til I die - 18 til I die

can't live forever that's wishful thinkin'
who ever said that must of bin' drinkin'
don't wanna grow up I don't see why
I couldn't care less if time flies by
18 til I die - gonna be 18 til I die

it sure feels good to be alive
someday I'll be 18 goin' on 55! - 18 til I die

This morning I journeyed to a local shopping mall to collect a home appliance from the dealer. An appliance of nondescript dimensions, which the makers decided to pack in a regular rectangular Box . The total mass is less than 15kg (say 33 pounds in the old language) – the weight of your average six-year-old – or thereabouts. But the size of the Box was something else!

The sales assistant, a portly twenty-thirty-something lady heaved this monstrous blue and white carton onto the counter with a puff and a grunt. There may well have been another sound effect, but I didn’t detect it.

After I’d explained about just recently having had my sinuses done (amazing how we instinctively make excuses for the ageing process, I realized) and having declined her kind offer to carry the Box for me the two to three hundred metres where I’d left the car outside, I was happy when she shunted a junior off in the direction of the liquor outlet shopping trolleys at the end of the mall. Yes, liquor trolley should do it – they’re designed to cater for a full week-end’s worth of drunkenness – Plenty of space.

This Box! At dimensions of 72cm x 65cm x 28cm, you’re looking at something much more vicious than the largest suitcase. It’s like a huge rectangular set of bagpipes, which you cannot squeeze and which obstructs your view of the footpath ahead. You certainly need the undivided attention of both hands to make any sort of progress. But, that is no longer a problem, once the box is sitting, like an intoxicated smiling puppy, in the liquor trolley.

This mall has two levels of shops. I started off at the northern end on the lower level, with the car parked on the upper level at the southern end, on the other side of town, so to speak. No sweat, I need to drive the trolley into the elevator (we call it a ‘lift’) and go up one level. There’s scores of escalators everywhere in sight, but only two elevators, one on the north end and one on the south end.

When I reach the elevator closest to the dealership where I’ve just been, there’s six or eight huge trolleys waiting in a queue to go to the upper level. They’re all filled with… yes, you’ve guessed… liquor – how can people drink so much on a Sunday? Or perhaps they are stocking up for that religious holiday – the one where they need so much booze --  Christmas?

This waiting issue will need patience, and patience is something a young fellow like me hasn’t yet learned about.  No problem, I’ll simply speed the trolley down the lower shopping alley and do the elevator thing at the south end. Same result, easy peasy.

Or so I thought.

Finally I had the elevator precinct in sight (ok, ok – there was only one elevator, so let’s call it ‘the elevator shaft area’). At least there were no booze-laden trolleys queuing up here!  And I’m first in line, that’s more like it, I thought smugly, with the Box snoozing smugly in the liquor trolley.

Out of order for repairs.

What a filthy-worded public notice. They should be ashamed. Can they not use proper English? Disgusting language, and there are children around as well.

I then had one of my cunning plans. I could ditch the trolley and sort-of ‘coax’ the box on and off the escalator. On a busy pre-Christmas Sunday morning, other shoppers are not all that co-operative or friendly, the bastards. Where’s their Christmas spirit? Oh yes, in the liquor trolleys!

I have forgotten to mention that I was also carry loose items: a cellphone, a pair of reading spectacles in their bulky case, an elongated chequebook/ purse – collectively I’ll call them ‘the Paraphernalia’. I had no useful pockets, and I virtually needed both hands simply to accommodate the Paraphernalia.

You will appreciate that the presence of the Paraphernalia severely hampered my dexterity (lack of, actually) in actively managing the Box. I struggled and puffed with the Box, while shoppers streamed past me on the left and the right. One or two with extra-long legs, didn’t bother to side-step me, but simply stepped over my stooped sorry figure, huddled near the bottom of the ‘Up’ escalator.

I huffed and puffed once more, with other sounds unheard by the thronging flood of upward-bound shoppers, and abracadabra, I was standing on one step of the escalator with intoxicated puppy Box on the one just ahead. Cunning.

We were nearing the top where you must hop off and then slow down to avoid looking like a fool on the floor, or you simply catch your sandal in the works, trip, stumble and cause a commotion on the floor. Hint: If this should ever happen to you, create a huge din, scream in pain and anguish, and then make threats and promises about suing the mall management for grievous bodily harm. Some onlookers may of course merely glance at your sorry state in bewilderment and press on towards the liquor store.

‘Disgusting that an old man can be so drunk in public so early on a Sunday morning.’

Maybe that cunning plan was not so clever.

As we get to the top, I realize that I cannot see what I am doing, and I cannot judge when to lift the Box and when to step forward and off the escalator. This could end up nasty. I glance at the fellow on my left. He gives me a knowing smile!

See? Humankind can be kind. This upstanding young man has seen my Box and he has seen my predicament and will obviously assist me – that’s what a good education is all about – respect your elders and help others whenever you can. Bravo! Bravo, fine young man! I estimate three seconds to landing.

One.. two.. three..

The young man leaps forward, vaults over the box, almost elbowing me completely off the escalator, and then disappears into the teeming throng of liquor shoppers ahead. My Paraphernalia almost spills all over the neighbourhood.

Bastard. Selfish bastard. Uneducated bastard. Sometimes appearances can deceive. Sometimes bastards can disguise themselves as clean-shaven Bravo-people. It just goes to show.

By now, I’m herding the Box along the tiled floor rather than trying to carry it, keeping out of the main stream of feet, closer to the shopfront windows. My chest is heaving and I’m having a bit of a gasping-for-air spell. Nothing life-threatening, you understand, but not your pleasant Sunday morning stroll in the park, either. The passers-by will obviously wait for you to collapse and to foam around the mouth. Then they’ll pinch your Paraphernalia and rush off, ostensibly to alert a security guard of a possible heart-attack victim lying opposite the elevator.

Another clean-shaven young man, quite a bit older than Bravo-bastard, offered to help, but, embarrassed at my own incompetence, I tried to smile and waved him on in a friendly fashion. At least, I wanted my response to come across as friendly.

I’m not really an incompetent, you know, not really. I’ll be 18 till I die, that’s how I feel inside my body. 18 going on 67. 18 with 49 years experience, and we hope that experience still counts for something.

Moments later, the clean-shaven young man returned.

‘There’s a spare empty trolley over there, if you want one,’ he said in a caring voice, and pointed to a lonely-looking liquor trolley about twenty metres away. He smiled and walked off, without causing me any further embarrassment. Sometimes Bravo-people can disguise themselves as Bravo-people, you never can tell.

After being dragged for so many metres across the floor in public like a drunk arrested by the cops for public indecency, I suspect that puppy-dog Box was also quite pleased to see his new transport, as I lifted him off the floor, like a fresh 18-year old in a fitness camp. My breathing had already normalised. Box had also normalised.

The trip home was quiet. I had thought of letting Box sit on the back seat, but decided against it and let him sleep in the boot (some call it ‘the trunk’). Other motorists tend to label you as old and senile when you drive along apparently speaking to an inanimate Box!