In Which I Love The Target

I love the Target. Can I just tell you? I love the Target. I have a testimony of the Target. In fact, let's be honest here, I'd live at the Target if they sold beds like at Macy's.

(That has always been a dream of mine; living in a mall and browsing from store to store after hours, and sleeping in a Ralph Lauren bed on the 3rd floor of Sears, and eating nothing but Wetzels Pretzels and Orange Julius and Panda Express and trying on shoes at Nordstrom all night long.)

Truthfully, I can't make it out of the Target without spending at least $100 on wonderfully useless things. It is always surprising to me how quickly little cheap things can become so very expensive, and today's Target day was just a day like that.

Today's Target day was the same as always and yet so, so different, and discombobulating (a fantastic word), and disorienting, and so now here is the story of today's Target Day, a.k.a., How I Learned How to Shop in NYC The Hard Way.



So let's set the stage. The Brooklyn Target. Atlantic Avenue.

They all have the same things and the same dollar section (ohhh, my love the dollar section!) and essentially the same layout, except the Brooklyn Target is two stories tall and has two escalators; one for you, one for your cart, and the Brooklyn Target is the only Target in all of New York City and it is super fantastically crazy there. I got in cart fender-benders (risked my life!), got boxed-in at the electronics section, and I stepped on at least three smallish kids, but I had a list and I am a pro and I was going to SURVIVE.

We just moved to New York City and my freakishly small apartment has no trashcan, no towels, no pillows, sheets, shampoos, soaps, toothpastes, or dishes. This apartment has no hangers, no laundry detergent, no nothing.

This is something like the third or fourth apartment I've set up in my silly life, and I will tell you right now that I am not bragging when I say I'm a bit of an expert at buying all the condiments you will need in your fridge in order to survive in one big huge shopping excursion. I know how to buy a spice rack, folks. It's like, super easy, you load up your cart, you load up your car, then you spend all week unloading the car and finding homes for things, and then it's like you've been there forever, you know? Forever and ever amen and I'm really ridiculously good at it, is all I'm saying.

So I was going through the motions, right? Pillows: into the cart. Candles: into the cart. Ajax and Soft Scrub: into the cart. Cute tee-shirts because I felt like I deserved it: into the cart. Right?

The lines at Brooklyn Target are insanely insane. They're long. They're soo long. I had finally gotten up to the front and had all my Target goodies rung up and double-bagged and put back in the cart and as I wheeled the cart toward the front entrance, all my Target bags teetering perilously taller than my head, I remembered that I no longer owned a car.

(I no longer own a car!)

And the security guard was giving me this look, like he knew I obviously had no idea what I was doing, or else I'd have a team of line backers to carry everything home for me, and seriously, what was I thinking?

And that's when I realized I'd have to carry everything I bought home, and that in order to get home I had to walk four blocks in the heart of stinking Brooklyn, in the height of stinking sweltering summer, and then somehow make it through the stinking subway turnstiles in one go, even though me and all my bags were the width of three stinking subway turnstiles easily, and then holy moley did I get one wicked case of buyers remorse, my friends!

No I didn't panic. Okay maybe a smidge. I mostly calmly assessed the situation. I was about to attempt the impossible: I was going to carry a $300 Target bonanza all the way to the subway, and then all the way home.

I loaded up my arms. The plastic handles cut into my skin. Now is not a time for pain, I told myself. Now is a time for heroes!

And I did it! Me and my trash can and my broom and my eight million cleaning products and my sheets and towels and moisturizer and food and dishes and candles and bed raisers and hangers and dryer sheets and a Sigur Ros CD for good measure, we made it home. Sweaty, exhausted, but in one piece.

I fought the Brooklyn Target today, my friends. I fought it, and I won.