walking through toys'r'us with neal, looking at star wars toys. found the hot wheels/matchbox aisle with all sorts of cars, and found craig's christmas gift --- this involved neal and me making lots of jokes at the absent craig's expense, such as "omigod, thatsafuckingfortythreethousanddollarcar!" and "oh, well, that one just has the most beautiful back end..." after picking up a silver ferrari, i noticed the "james bond collection", primarily because the card showing a bathing-suit-clad sean connery and buxom babe from "thunderball" looked more like it belonged at an adult toy store than toys'r'us, but it had the astin martin, and the almost-porn quality, so it was a fitting gift.
but this was not before i had the chance to make neal sweat. one aisle back, we're looking at the the star wars guns, and i notice on the other side of the aisle a whole array of metal handcuffs in plastic, sealed to white cardboard. this is kinda funny to me. and neal sees what i'm looking at, and laughs, and looks for a second and says, "two dollars?!? but those are no good, they have the little safety release on them," to which i reply, entirely without thinking, "but really, you know, that's a good thing sometimes..." and i trail off as i notice that these cuffs look really familiar. the safety catch, the little lever on the side, the placement of the hole, the keys... the keys... and i pull from under my t-shirt the long necklace bearing the odin's wheel from samhain and the key from, well, thanksgiving's, um, enjoyable toy purchase, and inspect that key... and then i hold the one on my necklace up to the one on the package. they're exactly the same. "hmm," methinks to myself, "looks like there is but one manufacturer... was the tiger-striped fake fur lining really worth an extra four dollars?" and, apparently, neal noticed me checking out the keys. he laughs a bit, and says, "what, you got a similar key or something?" and i reply, a little too matter-of-factly, "well, yeah, of course..."
one... two... three...
and neal says nothing, but by the look on his face i can tell he just figured it out.
cha-ching....
Sat, 11 Dec 1999 16:29:00