IMAGINARY FRIENDS - Page 16

5

After the sadness of seeing the ornament again, Jeff had to do something to clear his head. So he headed back to the thing he knew best, and eventually wound up in Way Mo’ Toys. It was, after all, Christmas Eve.

Jeff secretly preferred Tidman’s Toys, with its giant electric train track, lovingly crafted pull-toys, and hand-stitched dolls of cloth and yarn. There was an atmosphere in there, a nostalgia for a childhood he had never personally known but wished he had, a childhood that belonged to half a century ago.

Not that he could have ever admitted that in a board meeting. Tidman’s was a mom and pop organization, whereas Way Mo’ was one of the shiny, happy corporate chains that predominated in today’s market. Way Mo’ was one of Wack-O!’s biggest customers, whereas Tidman’s didn’t even register on the radar. Tidman’s carried car models and Norwegian block toys, while Way Mo’ carried all the latest anatomically overdeveloped super-hero and -heroine plastic figurines. So when the boys got bored in Tidman’s after five minutes, they always made the trek to Way Mo’.

Jeff figured he shouldn’t complain. After all, he had developed some of those plastic figurine lines himself, and paid his mortgage as a result. Sometimes, though, deep inside and late at night, he worried that he might have been a little too successful.

Now was not one of those times. At the moment, he was just one of hundreds of parents having to explain the more distasteful effects of supply-and-demand capitalism.

“Look, everybody wants Bubble Babies, and they bought them all up! There aren’t anymore, okay?”

Davey was having none of the economics. He stamped, and he moaned, and he made faces. “But why?”

“Because people bought them up and now there’s no more left.”

“But why?”

“Because the company didn’t make enough.”

“But WHY?”

“Because their sales department decided that creating an artificially high demand would increase the buzz on the product. Either that or the Marketing department out-paced the manufacturing division, and boy, is manufacturing going to hear about it at the next quarterly review.”

That threw Davey for a second.

But he quickly recovered.

“But WHY?”

“Hey, isn’t that a Mighty Micro-Man Marauder?” Jeff pointed.

“WHERE?”

And thus was the Bubble Baby temporarily forgotten.

If outside Jeff had been a salmon swimming against the tide, in here he felt like a tortoise in an Olympic-sized pool of molasses. He had to keep an especially tight grip on Brian and Davey as they all muscled through the mob of harried adults and whining kids.

Subconsciously or not, Jeff had steered them into the Wack-O! toy section.

“Hey, what about this? What about the MegaLaser Action Ray Gun?” Jeff asked, as he retrieved a package stamped with the orange Wack-O! label.

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Copyright © 2008 Darren Pillsbury. All rights reserved.