The Best $1.29 I Ever Spent

Feeling lazy we ordered Chinese take-out a couple of nights ago.  The place is only a couple of blocks away, so when I grabbed N and headed over to pick it up, they still needed a couple of minutes to pull it all together.  Fortunately for us right next door there is a "Bargain 2000!" store - yet another instantiation of the generic and otherwise ubiquitous "99¢" store genre.  I'm not sure exactly what the "2000" is supposed to represent, but it does look a little like its best years were a decade or so behind it. N and I wandered over and poked around.  It was oppressively empty, except for the significantly shady-looking man behind the wire mesh surrounding the cash register.  We threaded the aisles, admiring all the candles of the Virgin Mary, the dishtowel prints in a hundred forms of plaid, and the reams and reams of spiral-bound notebooks decorated with pictures of Justin Bieber and whoever took over for Menudo. I had no intentions of spending anything but time, but then, as we wandered through the brittle plastic toy aisle, it struck us. I think we both saw it at the same time and realized that the discount gods were smiling on us:  there, mounted on the far wall, a cheap plastic bow, complete with a set of three cheap plastic suction-cup arrows! Throw-away toy Nirvana!

We quickly rushed over and snatched one up, knowing the steal might not be there when we got back if we tarried to first circle around the aisle with all the cans of hominy and picked radishes.  Clutching our discovery with the death grip of a trained one-day-only sale affectionado, we hurried to the up to the cash register and its attendant, who I think might have been the original inspiration for the bad guys in all the truly old Mickey Mouse cartoons.  As I handed him the treasure I knew there had to be a catch, and I wasn't mistaken.  I was soon shocked to find that this toy, unlike the rows and rows of cheap plastic abominations hanging on all sides around it, was not the standard 99¢, but a scandalously whopping $1.29. I cringed, envisioning all my future retirement goals falling short, yet begrudgingly shelled out the extra thirty cents. (Why do I suspect if I'd selected that cheap plastic Little Mermaid back scratcher instead, that would have been the only marked up item.)  Having victory in our hands we fled the store before all the other jealous patrons realized our score (assuming some showed up), and headed back to the Chinese restaurant.  Our food was ready and when the lady behind the counter handed over the bag I know she saw and coveted our priceless acquisition.

We got home and had to fervently restrain ourselves to leave the bow and arrow unopened until after dinner, but then, when we finally declared the meal complete, there was a small flurry of plastic wrap and wire twisty binder thingies, and the weapon was out and available for all the laud and admiration from Mommy and L that it clearly deserved.  (It turns out the women-folk have a seriously deficient sense of appreciation for fine combat systems.)  N and I set to play and soon we were shooting spit-slicked sucker-cup arrows at anything that didn't move (and a few immediate family members that did).  Stacy seemed to disagree that her china pitcher on the mantle was the perfect size, height, and range for competitive target shooting - she's such a spoil sport - so we had to find something else to shoot at until Mommy wasn't looking.  It was the most exhilarating thirty minutes we've had in a long time, which is just about the time it took to break the third and final arrow.  My retirement may have suffered a blow, but all in all, I think it was a buck twenty-nine well spent.