Target Pixies

My local Target is transmogrifying into a Super Target (which I want to write as SSSSSSOOOOpah Target because that's how it sounds in my head). Originally it just meant that half the store was closed off and it was hard to find a place to park, but then something happened and I'm pretty sure the store is infested with pixies. Really, really energetic little Target pixies.

First they took everything in the store and rotated it one place clockwise (Clean plate! Clean plate! Move down...) which was disconcerting, and a little irritating as half of the stuff I wanted to get to was now farther away and I had to waaaaaaalk. Apparently that wasn't good enough though, because about a month ago they began arbitrarily picking up entire sections and shuffling them mysteriously so one day dog food would be cozying up to the potato chips and then whoop! Swap! it's seven aisles down next to the Barbie pink area. I'm pretty sure it was pixies because it all happened over night and the employees themselves knew nothing about it - the poor checkout people started looking hunted and trained themselves out of the habit of asking cheerily, "so! Did you find everything okay today?"

I think the store manager might have forgotten to leave a bowl of milk out overnight or something (or is that for brownies? I forget...) because the pixies clearly got their little mythical knickers in a twist and they began simply vanishing things away leaving sad little empty squares of floor all roped off to show where the crime took place.

It made shopping there a bit of a gamble as a. you weren't ever sure whether there would even be a laundry detergent aisle today and b. even if it was there it was very likely you wouldn't be able to find it.

However two weeks ago there was a whole day where the store smelled strongly of rubber cement* - except by the new coffee counter where it smelled of pinon-flavored espresso rubber cement, last week burly men with overstretched t-shirts began standing around in large groups and watching one guy muscle freezer cases into place and yesterday we got a nice mailing telling us we could now buy milk and cheese and frozen peas along with our chic and cheap bathroom rug.

I admit it'll be nice to have easy access to not-Costco-sized slabs of lunch meat. But I'm gonna miss those pixies.

*did anyone else love rubber cement as a kid? It was so cool! It was goopy, and it smelled horrible, and if you used only one layer it made a sort of post-it note out of anything you wanted and if you slapped it on both layers it acted like really really good glue but it didn't warp your construction paper. Plus, if you painted it on something really thick (and it was excellent fun watching it dry, wasn't it? Dang I was a sad kid...) and then rubbed it off it made beautifully convincing looking boogers.