Thomas on Sale! It's True!

I never thought I'd see those three words strung together, but never say never as I have learned yet again.  The Baba Noba (Barnes & Noble) near us on Huguenot Road is moving across the street to Chesterfield Town Center, so they are selling off lots of books on the cheap.  The clerk there said they are going to mail all the leftover books back to the publisher, and then the publisher will mail "new" copies of the same book across the street to the new store at the mall.  If you can make any sense out of that inane plan, please don't bother to explain it to me because I am going to be too busy cleaning out my sock drawer to follow your logic.  

So, anyway, back to the main feature -- Thomas on sale.  Yes, lo and behold, there were the Thomas trains on sale, up for grabs.   I thought I was hallucinating when I first saw the display near the cafe, perhaps too much expresso to the brain from inhaling a grande latte.  Don't ask me why they are on sale because the trains are small and hardly heavy, plus they sell like gangbusters, which is why they never go on sale in the first place.  But who am I to turn my back on a 40% off sale, especially when they are going quickly and my son is a Thomas-a-holic? 

Of course I charged in and snapped into prime hording mode, grabbing trains left and right. Sam looked thrilled but confused, wondering what he had done to earn such a train bonanza. He joined in the fray, amassing trains too, ready to rake 'em in while the going is good and Mom seemed to be in a gung-ho buying mood.   The problem was that I wasn't.  Yes, I was buying trains by the fistful, but I wasn't planning on giving him any until his birthday.  And that, my friends, is in June, a whole three months away on the calendar and a lifetime away in toddler-time.

So, as we get up to check out, I am now trying to balance all of the trains, yet keep Sam by my side while not letting him see just how many trains I had in my hot little hands.  This was no easy feat, mind you.  Well, when we got up to the counter, I decided to put most of them on hold until I could come back later to buy them without him.  Sam couldn't figure out what in the world was going on -- we had all these trains between the two of us, we were at the counter, yet only a couple were actually going home with us.  What?!  So, I looked at the clerk, giving her a desperate look.  You know, the look, "Please, do something, anything!  Help me!"  She stepped right up to the plate, announcing, "We need to keep these here and make sure they work."  Brilliant.  I will never shop at Borders again.

As we walked out to the car, Sam kept muttering to himself, "Bill and Ben need to get repaired."  That's right, and hopefully they will be shipshape come June.  But even then, I couldn't wait until June either, so I broke down and whipped out Peter Sam for him as a reward for being such a good sport.  He was 40% off after all, the same price as my latte.

LibbY