Published: June 23, 2009 10:58 am      

Lee Ward: 06/21/09 — Shopping bus trip proves to be a day of fun

I made a weird decision for myself lately. I agreed to go on a day-long bus trip for shopping.

This is a weird decision for me because I tend to get carsick and I’m not the biggest shopper in the world.

I went, though, because I thought it would be something different to do and one of my friends was one of the organizers, so it was an opportunity to spend some time with her.

When I arrived at our meeting place at 6 a.m., I was startled to see children. There were two babies and a little girl.

Oh no, I thought. I can’t bear the screaming and shrieking that comes with this kind of traveler. I have made a terrible mistake.

But I was wrong. Those three children were the best behaved I have seen. The girl baby never made a sound. I forgot she was there. The boy baby cried only a few times toward the end of the day. I could relate to that; by the end of the day I was so tired I wanted to cry, too.

The little girl, I guess she was 8 or 9, was a perfect little lady. Not only that, she was our gopher, running drinks and snacks to the back of the bus and distributing papers and such for our games.

Yes, games. Ordinarily, I would cringe at games, but these weren’t bad, not like some of the games they make you play at baby and wedding showers. Besides, I actually won a prize. That never happens!

Another concern I had was that the women on this trip would be rabid shoppers, the kind that will sock you in the gut to get you to let go of the Dutch oven marked 90 percent off that they saw first.

Not so. These were decent, fun-loving folk who didn’t take it too seriously, even though they were willing to get up at 5 a.m. on a Saturday for a bus ride just to shop.

The crowd didn’t even get violent on the way home during a game of Yankee Swap.

The game is, everyone puts in a gift of $5 or less and everyone who does gets a number. Going by the number, each person picks a gift from the grab bag, or you can take someone else’s gift.

Most thought taking something someone else had drawn was rude, so most drew from the grab bag.

I stirred things up by taking a candle holder shaped like a green bottle from a woman who drew before me. Hey, I wanted that green bottle!

Turns out, everybody wanted it. The green bottle was the most-stolen gift in the whole game.

In the end, I didn’t get the green bottle, but I did have an unexpectedly good time.

LEE WARD can be reached at lward@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2661.