The Salamander

Some weeks ago, our TV gave up its ghost so Janice and I were forced to dig up her old TV, the one she used in her bedroom when we were still in college and, I must add, the same one that witnessed many of our acts of premarital sex. Anyway, we dug up that old thing and set it up in our living room. It’s a tad smaller than the one we were used to wasting our days on, but a TV is a TV and God forbid we miss out on watching our favorite cable channels (movie channels for me and lifestyle channels for my wife). To our dismay, we quickly discovered that that set wasn’t cable ready. We had to acquire a piece of equipment called a channel selector, which costs around three thousand smackaroos.

Fortunately, our friend Jerome passed by and offered to lend us his channel selector since he’s not using it anymore. I think he bought a new TV set for his apartment or some other shit that I don’t really care about. What I do care about is that we’re getting an expensive piece of equipment for free. So I hooked up that black box (thinking, “something this clunky cost 3,000 Pesos?”)… or rather, I tried to . The next problem that old accursed TV hurled at me was the fact that its input was of the old antenna type. I had to go out and buy some sort of jack for it. And that’s what brought me to the mall.

I went to the local Handyman hardware store in Robinson’s Los Baños and found what I was looking for. As is my wont whenever I go to a hardware shop, I started looking around. While I don’t fit the male stereotype of a Mr. Fix-it, I do have a fascination with power tools, axes, knives, and all that manly shit. Maybe it’s a manifestation of my insecurity about my penis, this attraction to big tools I don’t really use, but I’ll leave psychological profiling to the disciples of Freud, say thankya.

So there I was, window shopping, when a jumper-clad sales assistant went up to me asking what I needed. Now this is a really annoying question in my opinion. If I wanted any help I would ask for it. And it was pretty obvious that I was only looking around. I try not to be an asshole outside of the internet so I politely told the man I didn’t need any help and that I was only looking around. He stepped back a little and just stood there. I swear I could feel his eyes burning holes on my back. It became a small war between us. Who would walk away first? Well, if you must know, I am the type of person who does not walk easily away from a manly challenge like that.

It was unfair for him, really. I had the upper ground right from the start. He’d probably been doing that same shit with other customers since that morning and was bored out his skull. I, on the other hand, had all these tools to look at, inspect, caress, and such. Finally, the man walked away. Five minutes later, so did I. I rule, motherfucker. It was a Pyrrhic victory, however. What should’ve taken me five minutes at the shop actually went over twenty. And that sales assistant was getting paid for what he just did.

That little incident isn’t my first time engaging in a battle of wills with mall employees, however. I’ve done that before and I predict I’ll keep doing that until malls finally go out of fashion in some dimly seen future where all kinds of shopping are done online. Why, just this weekend, when we were shopping for toys for our godchildren and my brother-in-law’s kids, the same thing happened.

It was in Toy Kingdom in SM Megamall. Now, I am of the mind that Toy Kingdom almost sucks because most of it is filled with sissy-ass toys for toddlers. Its only saving grace is the action figures section. Predictably, during our shopping trip, I went to that section first. I was looking a nasty model of Hellraiser’s Pinhead when a sales assistant went up to me, telling me that the store has new GI Joes that just came in (ironically, Toy Kingdom employees, like Handyman employees, also wear jumpers as uniforms… it’s a bad sign methinks). I told him, no, I wasn’t interested in GI Joes. What I really wanted to say was that I think GI Joe is for pussies. No one ever died in GI Joe. And that was a fucking war. Whenever a Joe blows up a COBRA fighter plane, you always see a parachute popping out. And they all try to shoot each other dead with fucking laser rifles. LASER RIFLES! Pshaw-pshaw-pshaw, I’m already shooting with unrealistic laser guns but I can’t seem to kill a single COBRA operative because I’m a fucking pussy, pshaw-pshaw-pshaw! Look, if I wanted laser guns and futuristic technology, I’d go and buy Transformers action figures. At least in Transformers: the Movie, a lot of characters, both good and bad, die horribly.

So there I was, telling Mr. We Have New GI Joes that I’m not interested. He stepped back, and bored holes in my back, same as every single sales assistant I ever encountered in every mall store I ever entered. I sighed and danced that old fandango with him until he got bored and walked away.

These two stories and many more disgustingly like them leave me asking: what is it with mall employees that they all have the same game? Do they teach people in sales assistant school to do that? I know that they’ve been ordered to keep an eye out for shoplifters but shoppers of the non-kleptomaniac type would appreciate a little more effort at discretion from these mall people. Isn’t that why they put mirrors everywhere? But no, they have to stick to you like underwear rash.

Then again, maybe I do look like a shoplifter. And maybe bathing a little more often than once a week would improve my image.