Locked Overnight in an Office Supply Store.

I accidentally got locked in an office supply store overnight, because they didn't realize there was a customer in the Men's room, and it took so long for the automatic dryer to kick in that the lights had gone out and the doors had locked while my hands were still damp. A normal person might have called 911 on a cell phone, but mine, of course was in the back seat of my brother's car which I had borrowed for a week and parked in a distant corner of the store lot. Plus, this was one of those stand-alone big box stores set way back from the road and not near anything else.

"How about a store phone?" I asked myself impatiently. "Oh sure. No problem," I replied to myself with apparent disgust, "except that they're all locked in the manager's office and you can't get to them."

"That's not true, Sherlock," I retorted with such a sneer that I was stung by my own intellectual snobbery. "There is a phone at every cash register."

"A phone at every cash register!?" I repeated to myself, my voice now rising to a fever pitch. "O.K., genius!" "Let's try to use one so that the whole world can see why my brain is always in neutral!" This last retort was as much a barb about the idiocy of running into the Men's room just as the store was closing as it was a challenge to get an outside line from a cash register phone. As I uttered it, I remembered the announcement over the store intercom from five minutes earlier just as the Men's room door had shut behind me: "Attention shoppers. The store is now closed."

By now, the thought of recovering my pride overtook all my other thoughts (of which, admittedly, there weren't any) and I was determined to prove to myself that I could use a cash register phone to get an outside line and call for help. I set out immediately for the front of the store to find a cash register, a phone, and also some mints. Almost immediately, my left knee was introduced to one of the many fine poles they have at the office supply store doing yeoman's work holding up the ceiling.

"Hello," said my knee cheerfully to the pole.

"Go fuck yourself," replied the pole.

At this opportune moment, the rest of me was introduced to the polished cement floor as I fell to the ground in indescribable pain. It was so indescribable, that it could only be described as

"Hello," the rest of me volunteered to the floor.

"Go fuck yourself," said the floor.

From somewhere in the recesses of my brain (I think it was the incredibly annoying part that I'd like to kill) a little voice whined: "Well, this is another fine mess you've gotten us into."

"Who are you? Laurel & Hardy?" I said to my brain.

"I'm Hardy," said my brain. "Laurel, the douche bag, is lying on the floor in an office supply store in the dark with a wounded knee."

"Look. This is getting me nowhere," I blurted out suddenly. "Let's face facts. I'm hurt. It's dark. I can't see anything. I'm alone. I'll have to try to crawl to the front of the store."

"O.K.," said the pompous blowhard of a voice in my brain. "But I hope there aren't any thumbtacks on the floor and I jam my hand into it."

"Thumbtacks!?" said I with such incredulity that I couldn't believe it. "This is a Staples!"

A silence fell over the room. I tried to prop it up, but it was too heavy. Instead, I made my way in a slow, meticulously, painful crawl to what may have been aisle 14 (hanging folders, portable files), but could just as easily have been aisle 7 (markers, tape, glue). Considering my condition and the hostile environment, I actually made admirable progress for a stretch. After several minutes, my left hand landed on something round and metallic. I grasped it in both hands and brought it close to my face while examining its perimeter with my fingers.

"It's a flashlight!" I gasped. "I'm saved!"

"Not quite," said the annoying voice. "It takes D batteries; sold separately. Guess where they are."

"At the cash registers?" I asked meekly.

"Bingo!" exclaimed the voice triumphantly.

"Oh crap," I said. "I have to finish the crawl to the front to get the batteries." I put the flashlight down and continued the odyssey.

"Wait a minute!" yelled the voice.

"Now what?" I hollered.

"What are you going to do when you get to the front of the store? Find some batteries and put them in your mouth? You have to bring the flashlight or else the whole thing is useless."

"I knew that," I said, reaching out with my good leg and trying to corral the flashlight. After a few flex moves I actually made contact and was able to slide the flashlight up to my hand.

"Great!" said my brain to my hand. "Now you reach out and grab the flashlight!"

"Will you shut up!?" I said to my brain. "You really think you have to give instructions to the hand? Why don't you take a break?"

"That's how I got into this mess in the first place," said the voice.

After this, there was nothing to say. Somehow, I continued the crawl all the way to the front. It probably took another ten minutes but if felt like eleven minutes. As my eyes were now growing somewhat accustomed to the dark, I actually could make out the faint outline of a checkout counter in the near distance. In a spastic burst of excitement, I knocked over a cardboard display of Easy buttons in the last gasp to the counter. They tumbled to the ground in their neat, little semi-exposed square boxes. In the still-dark room, I pressed down on two of them.

"That was easy!" they exclaimed in unison.

I ignored their mocking and grasped the brass ring. It was actually a super jumbo Twix bar.

'I'll save this for later,' I thought. It occurred to me for the first time since my ordeal had begun that I was starving. I put the super jumbo Twix bar in my pants pocket and fumbled around momentarily. Then I felt them. Batteries. Multi packs of them dangling from their hooks like ripe cherries. I reached up frantically and grabbed several packs at once. I found one that contained the D size, ripped it open, extracted them and inserted them in the flashlight. Its powerful spotlight illuminated the ceiling. I was stunned. I lay on the floor switching it on and off several times. Then I waved it around frantically yelling: "Look what I have created! I have made artificial light!" Then I beat my chest like a caveman.

I stood up and shone the light on the counter. I saw the little phone that the cashiers use. I walked around to the cashier's side of the counter and picked up the phone. There was a keypad on it, so I dialed 911.

"Hello? Hello?" I heard my voice echo throughout the store. It was nothing but an intercom. I pushed more buttons, but all I could hear was myself pushing buttons.

"See? I told you so," said the little asshole voice in my head.

"That's it! I've had it with you!" I screamed hitting myself in the head with the flashlight to quiet the voice. Rubbing my head to soothe it, I thought to myself that at least I could look around and see if there were any other phones that I could use. The voice started to say something then thought better of it.

I wandered over to the computers and the printers and the scanners and the...cell phones. Dozens of them, red ones, blue ones, white ones. There were probably other colors but red, white, and blue pretty much exhausts my knowledge of the color spectrum. All of the phones were attached to security wires so they couldn't be removed from the display. None of them worked, of course.

I decided I should try the front doors in the off chance they didn't lock from the inside. No luck. I was locked in.

"Well, I'm famished," I said. "Let's see what they have to eat around here." Actually, there was quite a lot to choose from. A giant plastic bottle of pretzels, cheese curls, Twizzlers and all the Arizona Iced Tea a boy could want. I gathered up a comely selection of comestibles and wandered over to the furniture section where I found a nice chair and desk set.

'I need something to read,' I thought. So I made my way back to the front of the store and selected a "Maxim" magazine (half concealed!) and a book entitled "Work One Day a Week and Make Millions," a philosophy to which I have always subscribed. I returned with my reading material to where I had spread out my meal, and sat down to an enjoyable supper.

I sat there for a very long time reading and munching. I don't know quite how long, but when I looked up I noticed that the pretzel bottle was only about one third full. If it had been an hourglass, it probably would have represented the passage of a lots of time.

The chapters in "Work One Day a Week" were pretty short. I was able to make it to Chapter 5: "Who Cares What Your Neighbors Think?" when the voice, which I thought had been knocked unconscious by the flashlight, suddenly piped up.

"I'm bored," it said.

For the first time, I agreed with the voice. I was bored.

'I'll play with the computers,' I thought.

"Why not play with computers?" asked the voice.

"That's what I just said," I said.

"No, that's what I just thought," said the voice.

I played with all the computers. I got bored again. Then I experimented with fonts and type size. It occur ed to me that I could make a very bold message by spelling out a phrase -- one word per screen -- that could be read in its entirety on all the computers lined up in a row on the back wall. In very large letters, I spelled out: HELP! - I - CAN'T - FIND - ANY - PORN - IN - HERE -.

By now, I was getting pretty tired, so I wandered back to the furniture section and chose the most luxe chair I could find. It was comfortable, but it didn't allow for me to stretch out, so I went looking for materials to make a suitable bed. I walked up and down three or four aisles with my flashlight, scanning the shelves with not much luck, until I came to the packing supply section. A few very large roles of bubble wrap laid out on top of each other made a very comfy and poppin' fresh mattress. Another role served nicely as a blanket. A bag of packing peanuts served as a pillow.

Before long (but immediately following short) I was off to Dreamland. Dreamland was, in fact, an anxiety-prone place. I dreamed I was stuck in a bowl of Rise Krispies, and every time I tossed and turned, they went "snap, crackle, pop!' Then I dreamed I was walking around a big store wearing nothing but see-thru bubble wrap and everybody was staring and pointing at me. Then I dreamed that my car was being towed. I was jolted awake.

Dawn was breaking. Out of the corner of my eye, I had the sensation of activity in the parking lot. I grabbed my flashlight and ran to the windows at the front of the store. I pressed my nose to the glass and saw a tow truck pull up to my brother's car. A man got out of the truck -- the driver I assumed. I started banging on the glass. He couldn't hear me; I was too far away. Then I tried Morse Code by turning the flashlight on and off several times rapidly in succession. Of course, I don't really know Morse Code, and for all I know, I was spelling out: "I want to make wild love to your mother." The chances were slim that I had actually spelled out anything, or that even had I done so, that a tow truck driver cheerfully hooking chains to my brother's car in a Staples parking lot at 5 in the morning had any better knowledge of Morse Code than did I. Nevertheless, the scintilla of a chance that this very large man would take offense at the faint dots and dashes emanating from inside the store enraging him to the point that he would smash his way inside and suffocate me to death under the bubble wrap became something of an obsessive fear with me and I stopped with the Morse Code. It wouldn't have made much of a difference, in any event, because he couldn't see me anyway. His task completed, he whistled a happy tune, jumped in his truck, and drove away with my brother's car in dragging behind.

"I'm tired," said the voice in my head. "I think I'll go back to bed."

"That's the smartest thing you've said all night," I said.

I shuffled back to my bubble wrap (after grabbing another book so that I could read in bed). The book I grabbed was entitled "Manage other People Effectively -- Even if Your Own Life is a Mess." For some strange reason, as I started to read, I felt at peace. I returned to Dreamland, where I dreamed about a train going into a tunnel, followed by a dream about a cigar, followed by a dream about being unprepared for a test and yadia yadda yadda, the usual.

The next time I awoke, all of the lights were on in the store and I heard laughing and talking; the morning crew had arrived to open up. It suddenly occurred to me that I could be arrested for trespassing or something, so I made a mad dash for the Men's room (the place where it all began) so that I could hide in there and then causally emerge when other shoppers had arrived, thus blending in with the crowd. Of course, I was careful to take the bubble wrap with me, and I also remembered to clean up my dining area in the furniture section so as not to leave any telltale traces. It wasn't easy stuffing everything into the Men's room trash can, but somehow I managed.

I waited in there for quite a while making mental notes about the tips I was learning from "Manage Other People Effectively." Not until I thought it was safe to come out did I do so, as I did not wish to do so until it was safe to do so. So I did so.

I strode confidently back to the front of the store sidestepping the unusually large group of customers gathered around the computer screens along the back wall. I made my way to the exit, and just as I was about to step into the bright sunshine, the electronic alarm sounded followed by a loud recorded voice that announced: "We're sorry. Apparently we have failed to remove the tags from your item. Please return to the cashier to complete your purchase."

I froze. The electronic alarm kept sounding. A lovely young lady security guard walked up to me.

"Sir, would you step over here, please?" she asked professionally.

"I didn't do anything," I said combatively.

"What's that in your pocket?" she asked.

I remembered the super jumbo Twix bar.

"Nothing. I'm just happy to see you," I said.