Guest writer

Christmas on order

Careful with that clicking there

This Christmas I got it into my head to give it a try. This online shopping thing. Heck, it can't be that hard. If my no-account brother-in-law can order a stainless steel, six-burner, flare-proof, auto-temp backyard barbecue grill from China, surely I can go online to buy a simple Christmas gift for Joanne.

Joanne collects dolls. Our spare bedroom is a virtual doll museum. Everything from Barbies to Cabbage Patches and the big gotta-have this year--Hatchimals. She's been collecting for years and even has the first one that her mamma gave her when she was 4 years old.

It's really quite a remarkable little piece of technology, given its age. The original box boasts that Baby Blue can walk, talk, drink, cry, and even wet the bed--not unlike my aforementioned no-account brother-in-law. Baby Blue is called that ostensibly because its little bottom turns a pale shade of robin's egg blue when it is wet. Why blue is anyone's guess. I guess yellow would have been maybe a little too, you know, obvious.

When she was 8, Joanne and her older brother (he now lives in San Francisco) were fighting over Baby Blue and, in the ensuing tug-of-war, he ripped its little left leg off. The little right leg that Baby Blue still has attached to her otherwise intact torso remarkably continues to bend when Joanne stands her up to walk. But she does an immediate face plant and struggles to do a pathetic crawl, kicking with her good leg and clawing away at the carpet with her reciprocating arms. Somehow that triggers her battery-powered cry. With her face buried in the carpet she shrieks like some demonic creature. She cracks me up, but Joanne gets creeped out. Reminds her of Chuckie. There are claw marks and little blue stains all over our white shag carpet that smells remarkably like Miller Light. I simply offer a sheepish grin when Joanne stares at me with "the look."

So, a few weeks ago, while Joanne was in the shower, I went online with the intent of doing a little Christmas shopping. I shoved the pile of dirty dishes aside and found the keyboard under the bag of potato chips and the mouse behind the toaster. We keep the computer on the kitchen table like most folks do.

With my Bank of America Visa in one hand and well-buttered mouse in the other, I ventured into the unknown and oftentimes treacherous virtual wilds of the World Wide Web. I typed the word "baby doll" into the search box. Now, I'm not saying our computer is slow or that the dial-up service for which we pay $6.99 a month is slow, but usually when the home page starts appearing, it has colored lines across the top and, as more colored lines are woven in like some Benedictine tapestry, a picture (of sorts) begins to appear. Some days, when Joanne is in the bathroom, she picks up the wall phone I installed next to the commode to call her mother (I always thought that was an appropriate place to hold a conversation with her mother). Just when they get into what her folks had for supper last night, the transmission will get disrupted and the screen freezes and I have to reboot and redial.

After several failed attempts, the screen finally came up long enough for me to enter my search word: "baby doll." I thought I heard Joanne begin to stir in the bedroom as she was getting ready to go out into the old-fashioned world of brick-and-mortar shopping. She's not the savvy computer nerd like me.

I quickly clicked on that little arrow that means "search" and scrolled down to the third entry and selected it. Their prices looked reasonable--only $39.99. A pop-up suddenly ... um ... popped up and informed me that if I added another item to my cart (wherever the hell that was ... I didn't even know that I had a cart) and if my order total exceeded 50 bucks I'd qualify for free shipping. By now Joanne was walking down the hallway, so I randomly and quickly clicked on something. I barely had time to click "Buy Now," enter my Bank of America Visa number, and log out. I put the dirty dishes back and walked over to the fridge to give her a kiss, beaming with pride at my newly discovered online shopping expertise.

Christmas morning arrived and Joanne and I took our freshly brewed pot of Folgers and gathered around our shiny aluminum Christmas tree. Mini-lites flickered as Perry Como serenaded us with "Silent Night" from the record player.

I opened my gift first. Joanne made me a new barbecue apron that read: Be My Grill Friend.

You should have seen the expression on our faces when Joanne opened hers. It was still in the plain brown wrapping paper from the Number One Baby Doll Company in Bangkok. It took me 45 minutes to inflate her.

Underneath some Styrofoam packing peanuts in the bottom of the box was the other item I randomly clicked to qualify for the free shipping. It required three D-cell alkaline batteries.

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Bill Rausch is a freelance humor writer from Little Rock. Email him at williamrausch25@yahoo.com.

Editorial on 12/24/2016

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