99 Cent Store

People talk about a lack of community in Los Angeles. I think. Anyhow, USC provides a community, so I've not been without one since I moved here. I have another tangential community, that of Silverlake, or more acutely, that of Sunset Junction. Basically that means the people at Eat Well know me. Anyhow, the other day I had a friend in town and we were walking back from breakfast at Millie's - east of Sunset from Sunset J, within walking distance from my house, and we pass by the 99 cent store. I remember that I need to find some plastic figurines for a game I'm making and it hits me that the 99 cent store might just have those little, cheap, plastic soldiers that I could paint and use for my final game project. We go inside.

I ended up not finding the little plastic soldiers. The thing about the 99 cent store is that you cannot count on anything being there, it's just sort of what they've got. But we perused around and noticed all the really cheap amenities, things I use that I can get for like a third of the normal price.

So it was today, while my pasta sauce simmered and when I needed tape, scotch, that is, that I ventured back to the 99 cent store for a second time. I search and I search and the only tape I can find has little pictures on it, as if it were to be taped onto a wall for decoration. Oh well. Part of me thought that perhaps I was burning my house down with the stove on low heat. I get in line. I notice a pretty hispanic girl. She has a child. Doh. Anyway, I get in line and a middle aged couple is in front of me. I'm waiting in line and I notice in their pile of items, a two-fer scotch tape dispenser.

"Where did you find that," I ask.

"Over there near the stationary. It's in a box, not on the shelf."

"Oh." I never thought to look in the boxes.

I walk over and sure enough, a giant box of exactly what I was looking for. And then I saw some big zip lock bags. I need those too.

I walk back into line, by this time it's much longer. I'm a little annoyed because I'm slightly worried about the simmering pasta sauce. Stupid, I know, to leave it. Anyway, I start feeling LA annoyed. That feeling you get when you see traffic on the 110 or waiting in line for a club/bar, the type of annoyed when you say, why the hell am I living here? But then you realize that there's traffic anywhere you'd want to live and the bars generally have lines whenever there's hot girls...and so I don't stress out too much, but still have a little burning annoyance. Anyway, that's how I felt. The pretty girl gets in line behind me. I see the guy who pointed me towards the tape leaving and he looks up and yells, "Did you find it?"

This isn't normal. What does he care if I found it.

"Yeah, thanks." I say.

The pretty girl taps me on the arm.

"I think he's opening up."

I look over and someone has opened up a new register.

I walk over to it, pay for my tape and zip lock bags.