After school, my little brother and I spent some time together. He wanted to get a Doctor Who jacket at Hot Topic, so we drove all the way to a downtown plaza to get it. Some silly stuff happened.
First off, parking. When we got into the parking building, I thought it'd be like other parking lots: pay for parking, get a ticket, leave the ticket on the dash, leave before time's up. Nope! I didn't have to pay a penny from start to finish, and that really made me uncomfortable, haha. I felt like I was skipping out on a tab. We also found out when we wanted to leave that the ticket had to be taken to a validation machine in the plaza. So we had to hunt around for a validation machine, and it wasn't easy. One sign that said Parking Validation pointed straight at the ground. Before and after futilely trying to navigate down underneath the sign, I was pretty convinced that the sign was asking us to phase through the ground. I still have no idea who thought that sign would help anyone. And the sections of the parking structure were identified with vegetables, just what? We were in 2Chili. Again, what.
After we parked, we needlessly walked around half a block to find an entrance into the plaza. We hunted down directories on each floor and navigated up various escalators, because come on they're escalators! We did end up betraying the escalators to use a staircase at one point. Dishonor on everything from us to our cow. But the staircase was alright because it wasn't straightforward, and there were some huge chess boards nearby that some people were messing with. I asked my brother if he wanted to play, but he was concerned about the non-existent parking fee, so we didn't dawdle. Making our way to the Hot Topic without help may have been a small feat, but it was a fun one for whatever reason~
That Hot Topic is not particularly clearly organized! After making our ways around the walls of the store, my brother and I found awesome stuff but didn't quite understand the layout. At all! We ended up in a corner with various Doctor Who items and some Supernatural and Harley Quinn stuff. I was so confused that I decided to stop being antisocial and talk to a clerk. So apparently one wall is for guys, the next is for girls, and the last is for... whatever they couldn't fit on the other walls, I guess. Since jackets are out of season and I couldn't find any neon-colored jeans in my size, we decided to get Attack on Titan tees! You know, the anime, AKA Shingeki no Kyojin? Anyway, at first the shirts were matching, but the clerk insisted that I get the other shirt they had available for the series, so I did. There were Minecraft figurines and plushies that tempted me, but we could each have only one item and the shop was doing buy-1-get-1/2. Random urge to be thrifty! My brother's going to wear his shirt to a field trip tomorrow. I'm sure someone will notice and call him out on it, or at least recognize his awesomeness.
Finally, back in suburbia, my little brother got a haircut. And the Asian stylist who tended to him said he looks like an anime character with his new hairstyle. Like, I've been calling him Asian for years! I think this serves as confirmation. We walked afterward to fetch a quesadilla for him, and on the drive back home I finally dropped by McDonald's to get a Shamrock Shake. Mmm. Though, can you believe that my brother forgot that they have McFlurries at McDonald's? Like, where else would have have McFlurries, man! I think he was satisfied with his Sprite though.
All in all, I had a fun evening with my brother. But... I couldn't help but think of you. You could have had fun with the navigation shenanigans and parking payment misunderstanding. We would have gotten you something from Hot Topic, and something tells me that it would have either been wibbly-wobbly or plushy, or maybe a shirt featuring Sebastian Michaelis' visage since that was an option. Maybe you'd have gone for a haircut too, and I know you'd beg for a quesadilla. A cola with no ice would have been added to the food order, and you would have contributed to teasing my little brother about forgetting about McFlurries. Us three have always gone out together.... Your only presence there, though, was through my thoughts.
Let's all have some fun together again sometime. Especially an evening out and about.
