For Thursday, December 24, 1998 Drummer Column, Gibbs, 689 words

How Angus McGee spent his first $10 on Christmas Eve

Angus McGee sat in the intersection behind the wheel of his family sedan facing a fresh green light and wept softly. It was as if he couldn't hear the blaring horns behind him. With both feet pressed firmly against the brake petal, Angus closed his eyes, gritted his teeth, and waited through his second green light.

It was Christmas Eve, late, and Angus was seized with a paralyzing attack of shopper's angst. To his left waited The Mall -- new, clean, huge, loaded with bulging stores, bloated with high-rent prices, and plenty of free parking. To his right lay The Downtown -- 63 individual, unique shops spread over a two-square-mile area connected by narrow, crowded one-way streets and limited, expensive parking.

Behind him stood the Super Acres Stores -- two giant killer warehouses that, combined, offered every commodity needed for existence on Earth -- food, jewelry, hardware, and the rest. Angus had just pushed a shopping cart up and down 3.8 miles of aisles and come out of the store in the late afternoon carrying four C batteries.

Any other time of the year, Angus would have his wife with him to point the way. She could buy gifts for a family of twelve in a Chinese grocery store. Tonight he was alone.

Ahead of Angus, over the horizon, were the outlet stores -- a matrix of similar-looking shop cubicles offering irregular, discontinued, and over-stocked items galore, only 46 miles away, round-trip.

When Angus first pulled up to the intersection he had on his right turn signal, figuring to make a loop. Then he second guessed himself and turned off the signal. After a long gazing moment -- his mind racing along multiple tracks, calculating time, value, creativity, and surprise -- Angus turned on his left signal. Then he turned it off. When the light changed to green, Angus flipped on his 4-way hazard lights and groaned like a mountain lion buried unharmed under a rock slide.

He pounded the steering wheel. None of the rocks would give. Why hadn't he bought his sister those boots he saw in June? For his wife, why didn't he call on that barely-used camera he saw in the classified ads last month? It was top-rated in Consumer Reports at half-price. Why didn't he buy his father-in-law that handcrafted humidor he saw in the Dallas airport?

How was he going to buy all the right things for everybody in one night, get them wrapped and under the tree, and make it all look pre-meditated? Who did he think he was, Santa Claus?

The owners of the second and third cars behind him came up to his front windows on either side. The man in the car behind him was also suffering from shoppers' angst and relieved that Angus was taking the heat up front.

A slender, angry man wearing a candy-cane scarf pounded on his driver's window. "Make up your mind, will you!" he yelled. He stood with his arms folded, staring longingly at The Mall.

A platinum-blond, middle-aged woman who worked for the city tax bureau clicked on his passenger window with her long red fingernails and smiled. She mouthed the words "Turn right" over and over again.

Out of the radio's four speakers came the familiar intro to "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer." Angus pawed at the channel changer. Now he heard dogs barking "Jingle Bells." He reared back. He whacked his changer again, and knocked out "Jingle Bell Rock."

He turned off the ignition and stepped out of the car. "Go around me," Angus said to Mr. Candy Cane. "My feet are sore," he said to Ms. Taxes. He gave the Thumbs Up sign to the man in the car behind him, then walked to the corner liquor store.

Angus requested $5 in change. He went to the pay phone. He called everyone he needed to buy presents for, one at a time, and asked them quite plainly, "Ho, Ho, Ho. What do you want for Christmas?"

Everyone told him again.