“Andthisis why French people hate Americans,” I laugh.
It’s actually fairly hard to find something bigger and better than that, but eventually I go with this oval-shaped plastic storage container. Zach is not having any of it.
“I see your random and flimsy bin and I raise you this broom,” he says.
“Um, no way.”
“Why not?” he protests.
“It’s not biggerorbetter. It’s just longer.”
“I think that counts, Addie.”
“We can’t leave here with a broom!”
Finally he relents and then we traipse around the store for several minutes until we find something to Zach’s liking. “Yes! My mom has one of these,” he exclaims as he approaches the far end of an aisle. “I think I win with this one. It looks like one thing from afar, but when you get close, when you really look closely, it looks like something else.”
He says this with such drama that I have to laugh.
“It looks like an umbrella, Zach.”
“Wrong,” he says. I’m pretty sure he’s not allowed to do this, but he pushes the tag out of the way and opens the umbrella up. It flares out with a swoosh, nearly knocking down some stacks of hangers by us. “It’s agiant-assumbrella. Functional, therefore better. And”—he points at the container in the cart—“bigger, therefore bigger.”
A little boy turning in to the aisle where we are points and whispers something to his dad. Zach turns the open umbrella so that it curves away from us, blocking us from the view of the customers, and he grins at me. “Think they can see us?”
We’re standing with our backs to a shelf of items, and when he speaks, I realize how close we are to each other. I almost shiver from how silly and light I feel.
“I think we’re in their way,” I whisper back, and Zach laughs and closes the umbrella so they can pass. One of the store workers is giving us the eye, and I don’t think I can top Zach’s item anyway, so we go to the checkout and pay for it.
On the way out, Zach hands it to me. “Yours,” he says.
I shake my head. “You won fair and square. I don’t need your pity.”
But he pokes my arm with the knob at the end of it and says, “I’m not pitying you. I’m having too much fun for it to be mundane. So I’m disqualified.”
I don’t know if his words land exactly the way he meant them to, because the atmosphere shifts the slightest bit then and I feel myself grinning and he glances away, like he didn’t mean to say that. I take the umbrella from him.
“Thanks.”
While we were inside the store, someone stuck a yellow flyer under the wiper:OVERTON INC.—CUTTING-EDGE NEUROSCIENTIFIC PROCEDURES THAT CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE. I hand it to Zach, who crumples the piece of paper and tosses it into the nearest garbage can.
As we climb into the car, Zach says, “So we have the first part of Doing Completely Mundane Things Exuberantly down, but we’re missing a crucial part.”
“What’s that?” I ask.
“The bragging,” he says.
We stay in the parking lot—windows down—while I craft the perfect text to Katy, using the memory of some of her updates as a template.
Just spent an hour shopping and bought nothing but a big-ass umbrella from Two Dollars or Less. Blessed!
Zach is thoroughly impressed when I show him my work, and Katy’s response—uncharacteristically fast, considering it’s been taking her hours to text back—is great.
??
Huh?
We shake with laughter for a few moments and then I say, “So what’s our next mundane thing? Or is one enough for the day?”
