Saturday, April 11, 2015
Hidemi’s Rambling No.540
My grandfather and I used to go to the department store together when I
was a small child. He had a pass that entitled senior citizens to a free
ride of the municipal streetcar. He usually said, “Not using the free
pass is waste of money,” and tried to take the streetcar as much as he
could although he had no place to go. As part of his useless effort, he
often went to the department store where he didn’t have to go at all,
and made me accompany him. While he didn’t have anything to buy, he
strolled around all the floors. To get only one different floor he used
the elevator that had an operating girl inside who would push the
buttons and say the floor information, and the other girl outside who
would close the outside iron door manually. It seemed he enjoyed the
ride as a free attraction. His typical behavior was to ask a salesclerk
the price whenever he spotted something expensive that he had no
intention to buy, and to exclaim loudly, “How expensive!” He often
looked into the costly merchandise that was on display in the glass
case, asked the price, cried his ‘how expensive, and just walked on.
When he was looking into the glass case of fountain pens intently one
time, the salesclerk asked if he wanted her to take some pens out of the
case and show them to him. He pointed out one by one and the clerk put
them out on a sheet of velvet. He asked the price each time and at each
answer he exclaimed, “How expensive!” “Outrageous!” “That much for a
pen?”“Really, really expensive!” His loud remarks rang out through the
quiet, elegant floor. After five or six pens were laid on the velvet, he
just thanked the clerk casually and left the counter as if nothing
happened. Even as a small child, I duly sensed his behavior was
fundamentally embarrassing. That was why I hated to go out with him so
much. In the lunchtime, he would order the most inexpensive noodle at
the food-court-like restaurant on the top floor of the department store.
He always ordered one dish for two of us and asked for an empty small
bowl to divide the noodle into two. While I ate the smaller portion, he
eagerly poured free tea, saying, ”Make your stomach full with free tea
if that’s not enough!” We usually had a lot of free tea since we were
hungry with only one noodle, and the huge kettle on our table went empty
fast. The table was shared with eight people and each table had one
kettle. He would start going around other tables for a full kettle. Many
kettles were sometimes empty and he would go to the far end of the
restaurant for free tea while checking the remaining content of every
single kettle along the way. He would loudly say, “Those who pay for a
drink are crazy when they have free tea!” right next to a customer who
was drinking a glass of soda. In those cases, he would return to our
table with a kettle in his hand as if he had hit a gold mine. Even a
small child like me understood that his habit was extremely embarrassing
and I really hated to go out with him. He did all of these things so
happily by wearing tattered clothes and shoes with a hole, and he
clearly enjoyed it immensely. I grew up and noticed there was a
terrifying thing such as atavism. When I visit an outlet mall, I first
go through price tags to see the percentage of discount, and if the
percentage is big enough, start looking the merchandise itself. Last
time, my partner asked me to quit that habit of mine. He wants me to
look at the merchandise first, then the price tag. I don’t order a drink
at the food court because it has a free water server. I also bring an
empty plastic drink bottle from home and refill it with the free water
for later breaks. “Those who pay for a drink are crazy when they have
free water,” I usually murmur in my mind…