LikeOldGuyTimeVille
I learned the art of last minute Christmas shopping from my Dad.
Once, when my brothers and I were kids, he packed us into the StratoChief and dropped us off at the old Odeon on Yates St. in Victoria on Christmas Eve afternoon.
We watched 'The Seven Percent Solution', twice, while he did one hundred percent of his shopping all at once.
The second time through the movie there was only one other person in the theater, an old guy who fell asleep about halfway through. We knew he was asleep because we were crawling around all over the place pretending to be spies from 'The Man From Uncle'.
My two brothers both had to be Illya Kuryakin.
I got to be Napoleon Solo because I was older.
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When I was in my late teens I saw my Dad at work once, in (still)Simpson Sears. It was kind of amazing to watch actually, as he careened down the aisles seemingly picking up things at random and stuffing them in the cart.
Which is not to say that we didn't have great fun at Christmas, because we did.
And we always got mostly the things we wanted. It's just that we often also got a bunch of stuff we'd never thought of, some of it that worked out (ie. 'Battling Tops') and some of it that didn't (ie. the Blaupunckt).
My own kids have been counting down the days to Christmas 2005 since late November.
All of which somehow got me into the spirit of things a little earlier than usual this year.
As a result, I actually started on Dec 22nd and when I woke up this morning, Christmas Eve, I only had one real gift left to get.
Of course, it was my Dad's.
I bought it at Zulu Records which is still a pretty hep-hop-happening-shop on 4th Avenue in Vancouver that I used to frequent looking for all important coolness back in the days of yore when it was still known as Quintessence.
This morning I managed to get there pretty early, before the bad craziness, caused by hundreds of people like my former self, began in earnest.
What I got for my Dad after considerable help from the staff because it is on the Festival Records label whose stuff is hidden away from all the hipper/hepper stuff for reasons very fathomable to the younger me, doesn't matter (and besides, I don't want to give it away).
What does matter, for this story at least, is what the guy beside me got.
"The James Brown Christmas Collection"
When the guy went to pay for it, the young kid at the register picked it up laconically and skeptically asked if it was any good.
The guy buying it, who was just as middle-aged as me said that it was.
I agreed.
And then the third guy in line, who was even more middle-aged looking than the rest of us, chimed in with the best bit - a description of the power and glory of track number three....
The young kid at the register's eyes widened and all the feigned coolness fell away.
And I left the store wondering how in the heck my life had melded with a bit part in a never-quite published Nick Hornby narrative.
Which isn't such a bad thing, I guess.
Merry Christmas!
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