So yea, what I am about to do is take an everyday event, and make it seems extraordinary. Pretty much I use a lot of adjectives and adverbs and exaggerate what really happened. I am sure somewhere in the world of all that is written there is some technical name for it. I'm not sure why, I just went to Radio Shack the other day to get a US to European adapter and thought it would be fun to write about. And don't get too confused if I suddenly change tenses in the middle. I started out in present tense then ended up in past tense, and I am not sure where the transition occured. I went through the whole thing and tried to make it all present tense, but I am not sure I got everything.
~*~*~*~*~
I walk into Radio Shack and things are fairly calm. The one employee was helping someone else. Other than myself they are the only people there. I go to browse to see if I can find the adapter on my own or wait till the employee is done. While I was looking, a slightly nervous looking employee comes darting out of the "Employee's Only" door. He walks up to the counter, turns around a couple of times like a dog on speed chasing his own tail, then dashes back through the door, mumbling something about someone picking up the phone.
I cross the aisle when suddenly, I hear a voice right by my hear were not a soul had been before.
Sorry I couldn't get to you earlier ma'am, how can I help you?"
The words followed each other in a rapid fire motion by a deep voice that may have rumbled if it hadn't been manic. Instead it rasped in an oddly crisp way. So quickly were the words spoken though, the person had finished speaking before I had a chance to register that the words were addressed to me. It too even more time for me to turn around and recognize the nervous employee from earlier as the voice.
I look him straight in they eye, which was odd since I am only 5' 2" and they only males I don't have to look up at are usually in middle school. His body was thin and lanky, his limbs held loosely in their sockets. His face was sharp and made angular by aquiline cheek bones and nose. His dirty blond hair looked well groomed and luxuriously soft. It covered the top of his head with gentle curls and crept down his face, giving him a full beard.
He stars at me with wide, unblinking eyes as if I possessed the required information to give his life meaning.
"Yes, uuuuuuuuu," I finally say, showing every bit of my intellect, and my mind having finally caught up, "I need a European plug adapter.
The man suddenly looks immeasurably more comfortable.
"Come with me," he says, jerking the right direction on his heels.
The man and I get to the place the adapters were kept.
"What kind do you need?" the man asks, looking at the adapters with feverish attention.
It takes me a moment to realize what he meant. I don't want to simply say European again in case he meant something else and I would sounded like an idiot, more of one at least. Then I realized he probably meant if I wanted US to Europe, or Europe to US.
This thought process takes about two seconds, and I part my lips to speak when I noticed the man already is holding both out to me.
I point to the US to European one. I also say "That one," but as the man already had the Europe to US one back on the shelf and placed the US to Europe on in my hand, the words seemed superfluous.
The man then goes into a monologue about needing a converter if my hairdryer, laptop, radio, or whatever had a voltage less than 200, and that I could check that and it was forty dollars instead of the nine of the adapter so I should come back instead of by\uying it now if I did not know and that was a phone number on the top of the receipt so feel free to call in case I couldn't remember anything he had just said.
It probably would take most people five minutes to say everything the man said, but he only takes about a minutes and seventeen seconds.
We walk over to the checkout counter and I buy the adapter. In the short time the man and I interacted the shop was suddenly full of frenetic energy. Five other employees had materialized and now darted form place to place with a curt grace. I was the only consumer, yet there was this wild rush of wild excitement. All I see are the blurred images of geeks all dressed in khaki rearranging gadgets I had hardly received my change before the man joined the fray.
I left, feeling an odd sense of regret that I had not read the man's name tag, so I would have to call him "the short blond guy from Radio Shack" for the rest of my life.
