Coat And Dagger ©

The migraines have seemed to be gone for the moment as have most of the people around me, begging the question, is there a connection?
I just checked my phone log and yesterday alone I have 23 phone calls from mostly family and two telemarketers.

Today I have to go out in the fresh slow that came down all day yesterday for about 14 hours and when I went out around 10 pm there was about six inches of it in my yard.
I guess I will be doing a little shovelling today also before I head out to do some shopping.

For the last week or two I have been going out with my parents getting stuff for them and the kids but have not had time to do some Christmas shopping for some of my friends.
I don’t have much to do because I managed to grab a item here or there while out with my mother but I can’t do much because of her age and she can only shop at stores and have boob rests.
Shopping carts with that small section in front of the handle that she drops her tits in to hold her up but I will tell you this, when she is hooked into it snug and secure she zips around the store like a 4-year-old on sugar.

The other day I took her out so she could pick up a few things and was looking for a winter coat for my youngest because she doesn’t have one.
She likes wearing layers of sweaters and I think that is one of the reasons she is sick a lot.
While we were there she managed to get something for the SIL and my niece before she spotted a coat that caught her fancy for my daughter.
It was a long black wool coat made in England that cost $180 total.
My daughter is into the Gothic look and wears everything black and this might appeal to her and she can still wear her vest with the hood on the inside.
She decided it was the one she wanted so she dropped it in the cart and we went for one more thing before we headed to the cash.

My mother is your typical immigrant who is still terrified that if she did something wrong she would be arrested then deported back to the old country even after living here for 49 years and becoming a Canadian citizen.
She is honest to.

Way back in 1968 she went to the washroom in a restaurant and found a wad of money, over $600 and went straight out to my uncle her brother and gave it to him just in case the person who lost it came back.
Miraculously my uncle said the man came back and was happy to have the money and left my uncle $20 bucks to give my mother as a reward.
In 1968 20 bucks was a lot of coin and 600 was a fortune.
Speaking of fortune it was about that time my uncle’s fortune changed to and he bought a new car from a lottery ticket he said he won.
Hmmm

I emptied everything from the cart and while the cashier was ringing everything through I asked him what the price of the coat was again to see if it was on sale and it was he said it was 150 dollars instead of 180, 15% off or something.
I told my mother and she was happy.
When the cashier finished running everything through my mother gave her charge card and paid for it.
On the way to the car my mother was trying to decipher the bill.
She doesn’t read English so she just looks at the prices on the receipt and links the to the prices of the items she saw as she was picking everything out.

As I was driving out of the mall’s parking lot she tells me there is something wrong with the receipt.
At the traffic lights I took the receipt from her hand and looked at it.
She was right, she had bought about $300 of stuff if not more and the receipt said $125.
Looking closer I noticed that he hadn’t charged her for the coat.
After he checked the price of the coat when I asked him he must have put it in the bag and without ringing it in.
If fact he got a phone call at the cash right after I asked him and he must have thought he added it to the bill.

Like I said, my mother is a paranoid immigrant who is honest and wanted me to turn the car around and go back to the store so she could pay for the coat.
We were right in the middle of rush hour traffic, half way home, on a Friday night with Christmas shoppers flooding the streets.
Fuck that I told her not going to happen.

She started crying that the cashier was going to have to pay for the coat and I told her no one knew it was his cash the coat went through because it wasn’t scanned and they will not even know its gone missing until they do inventory and who knows when that will be.
That didn’t put her mind to ease.
Her biggest worry was that the kid at the cash would have to pay for the coat.

Then she started on about if we got pulled over the will find the coat and I would go to jail and she would be deported to Greece and their health care was so bad that she would be sick all the time.
So I told her that we would just have to be careful not to be pulled over.
As we were going up main street I saw a cop car coming towards us and I told my mother to hunch down a bit so he didn’t see her just in case the store got a picture of her from the video camera.
My 80-year-old mother slipped lower in the seat and asked me if the store had a camera.
I told her all the stores no a days did so the could catch shoplifters.

She freaked when she heard shoplifter.
I said yup, they are going to make copies of your picture and pass them from store to store to keep a look out for her until she goes back and the grab her for not paying for the coat.
On the way home I had to stop to put gas in the car for my father, by this time my mother was practically under the dash of the car and totally out of sight.
When I asked for her debit card all anyone next to us could see is a tiny hands sticking up out of no where holding a bank card.

As soon and I pulled into the driveway she was out of the car and rushing for the house.
I stayed back and hauled the things we got and followed her ten minutes later after I first deposited my stuff through my back door.
As soon as I walked in my father asked what was wrong with my mother.
He said as soon as she walked through the door she ran to the living room window and has been staring out looking for someone or thing she won’t tell him about.

I went to the living room and led my mother back to the kitchen and introduced Calamity Jane to my father.
She broke down and started telling my father about the “Great Coat Heist” and get away.

While she was freaking out to my father who was laughing I went over the receipt again and taking inventory of what they bought.
My parents have this habit of shopping and forgetting bags behind then wondering where everything they bought was.

As I went down the list I saw where she bought two boxes of hair color for herself but there was only one in the bag so I interrupted her sobbing and asked her where the second box was and she said she only bought one box of hair dye.
I showed her the receipt and she then went into a fit about how they charged her twice for the same thing, the bunch of thieves.

“Sigh”

By the end of the day she resolved the whole day of events as a even trade and later when my aunt stopped by and she showed her the coat my aunt asked her how much it cost and my mother said “$6.99”.

My aunts eyes almost popped out of her head and wanted to know where she got the coat so she can go get one for herself but my mother said it was one of those specials that you had to be there just as it happened.

So today I am hoping to go out there on this white crispy day and get a little shopping done and if I am really lucky, really, really lucky, nothing will happen.

Have a nice day

Walker