the view of heaven from hell

prologue

for a few weeks now, i have had a mad urge to go to old navy and purchase insanely cute clothes and accessories. this has been hindered by two things: 1. there is no old navy anywhere in the general vicinity of mac. 2. even if there was, i, as usual, have no money. i know that eventually my mad urge will be temorarily satiated, but i never imagined the cruel twist of fate yesterday had in store for me.

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in order for this story to be as entertaining as possible, the words "old navy" should be read in the sing-songy tune that is heard on their cheesy commercials. mom and nicole cummings, you know what i'm talking about. hopefully more of you do, too.

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i spent yesterday in jail. no, not the kind with cells and bars where the only to survive is to kick someone's ass or become someone's bitch -- the kind of prison that is created by a 6.5 hour deli training session at lancaster roth's. this unique twist on hell began with a video entitled, "the invisible challenge." can you guess what the invisible challenge is? foodbourne illnesses! that's right! this fascinating little ditty featured an invisible narrator named howard and thought-provoking words like "shigella" and "drippage." the video was followed by the trainer reading the grotesque symptoms of every foodbourne illness on the planet, including shigella. after 45 minutes of this scare tactic, i came to a few conclusions: 1. eating is just a bad idea. 2. eating poop is a very bad idea. 3. ignorance is indeed bliss. next came our first break, where i ventured outside looking for a reason to go on. just before i went back inside, a gleaming wall of glass caught my eye. i looked up, and directly across the street, huge blue block letters proclaimed the words i'd been dying to hear: OLD NAVY. in that split second, with 47 cents to my name, trapped in the training session from hades, i understood the true meaning of injustice.

so, like so many times in my life, exactly what i wanted was so close, yet so far away. i had no choice but to face the sickening reality that i was not going to set foot in the cheap, trendy shopping mecca that day, and return to my jail cell. the afternoon contained many other tortures (how long do you think you could talk about slips, trips, and falls? how about how to suggestively sell potato salad?) but none compared to the view from one of the few windows...two stories of shopping goodness i can only call OLD NAVY.