We weren't going to be able to visit for her birthday—the girls were sick, and we couldn’t risk exposing Mom to that. Along with athletic pants that were “any color but black” and a framed picture of Mom and Addison, deep in loving conversation at Christmas, I had planned on getting her some coasters for her coffee table. I made an impromptu trip to TJ Maxx on Taylorsville Road (the best TJ Maxx in the Ville), but when I got there they only had two boxes of coasters. They were both the same, and while they were made of sandstone, interestingly enough, they were painted with some sort of patriotic-like family crest kind of patterns. Ugly; but I picked a box of them up and carried them around anyway.
I walked in and out of aisles of assorted kitchen wares before moving on to the clearance aisle filled with nesting storage boxes, vases, and picture frames, all either slightly damaged or made of such atrocious colors and patterns that no one could be persuaded to buy them no matter how cheap they were. I was poring over boxed stationary sets when I decided that the coasters, though not the ideal coasters I had envisioned giving her, were a much better choice. I wandered around the end of the aisle and saw the most marvelous thing I had ever seen in my life. And it was only $14.99!
Now, in order for me to reveal this treasure that I had found to you, you must know the story of “the hole.” In high school we played a child’s game in which you make the OK sign (or asshole—in sign language) and try to get your friends to look at it. If they do, you get to punch them in the arm. So the goal of the “hole” game is to punch some one for looking at something for no reason at all. Our friend ____ had brought this game back from grade school and had perfected the technique of catching you off guard.
“You dropped this,” and instead of handing you something that you might have actually dropped, it was the hole.
“Oh, man, look what I got the other day,” and reaching into a pocket would take out not the pocket knife you might have been expecting, but the hole. It seemed that the hole game had become such a common thing that the punching subsided and it was just as much fun to simply find a new trick for getting someone to look at the hole.
As all of our friends do, at some point or another, he spent time at our house, so the hole was rampant, and we laughed at making Mom fall for our little game. And, it seemed, that every time he came over he would say, “Reba, check this out,” hold out his circled fingers and laugh at her playfully angry face. The best part of it all was when, out of the blue, we would come through the front door after school and Mom would say, “Here you go,” and hold out the hole, a devious grin on her face, and we would all fall for it.
So, as you can imagine, it became one of those things that, every once in a while, when you least expected it, Mom would pop off with the hole and laugh at you when she did. And, when they took her picture for the paper, along side some other citizens recognized for their good-doing, there she was on the end, her fingers curled into the hole at her side, unobtrusive, and yet unmistakable.
“Look at this,” she pulled apart the pages of the local newspaper and showed us the picture. “I got everyone in ____ County!” She was more delighted at having had her picture taken with her hand making the hole than she was about actually being in the paper.
Imagine my own delight, when I turned the corner at the end of that aisle, and saw….the hole. Someone had actually made a mold of their hand, thumb and first finger curled into the hole, the three remaining fingers splayed. They had cast it in plaster, mounted on a small stand, this statuette sort of thing. It was like fate had guided me to TJ Maxx on this precise day to buy what no one else would have ever even thought about purchasing.
Mom said, when asked what she wanted for this or that occasion, that she didn’t need anything else to sit around and gather dust. But this, this was too perfect. She might have one more thing to dust, but I just had to buy it for her.
I wish I had had one of those shirt button hidden cameras to capture the looks that I got while I walked to the front of the store and stood in the endless line to purchase this object. And some people simply have no manners; they just stare at you like you are a bizarre weirdo. It's like they want you to see them stare at you. Apparently they want you to know that you’re a weirdo. Never mind that there is a purpose behind the weirdness.
Mom loved it, of course, and I had her open it while I was talking to her on the phone, so I had to tell her that I got her long distance. She said she would display it where everyone could see it, so she could get everyone who came to their house. And it is, perched at the top of the entertainment center, for all to see.
In the future, if you ever need to know that you’re alive and weird, then go to TJ Maxx at 2 in the afternoon on a Tuesday when the crowds are gathered and the lines are long, and pick up something absurd to carry around with you. Who knows, you might be able to go to the clearance aisle and find yourself a statuette of the hole.
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