Head implosion and affairs of the heart

Once upon a time, in the year 1996, my father and I were trying to fly from Orlando to D.C. with an inexplicably located layover in Chicago. This short layover was 30 minutes long when we took off in Florida, and 8 hours when we landed in Illinois. Deciding that we could better invest our 8 hours of unwanted free time in exploring Chicago than sitting in the airport, we departed for a short trip.

My father took me to FAO Schwartz. My seven-year-old head imploded. I'd never been much into shopping, and that included toys. So upon entering this toy Mecca, its sheer power overwhelmed me. My senses were overloaded. The store even had that piano you dance on to play, like in the movie Big. This was more exciting to me than many other children, because it was my childhood ambition to grow up to be Tom Hanks.
("What do you want to be when you grow up, Meredith? A veterinarian? A lawyer?"
"Tom Hanks!"
"You mean you want to be an actress?"
"No, just Tom Hanks.")

Though my father offered to buy me something, I left the store empty-handed, unable to cope with the magnitude of the experience. How could I chose, when the mere thought of picking a single toy from just one aisle nearly sent me into cardiac arrest? Traumatized, I boarded the plane. Later on, after I'd acclimated myself to seeing that many toys at a time, I was able to make subsequent visits to the New York store (which, now that it's returned to specialty toys, is really fun to window shop in) without incident.

My father and I went to New York yesterday, and got back tonight. Though we spent most of the two days together, he had a lunch meeting that left me alone in NYC for three hours. There was only one logical use of my time: shopping (I grew out of my aversion to it). When, after an hour of wandering Bergdorf Goodman (which I'd never visited when old enough to appreciate it) I finally entered the shoe section at a familiar feeling arose within me. The sweaty palms, the increased heartrate, the euphoria all spelled one thing: L-O-V-E. I hadn't recognized it when I was seven, but I knew then what it was.

The younger me, ashamed at how I've strayed from my former aspirations to be as un-girly as possible, cried out, "What's wrong with you? You girl. Where did I go wrong?"

But I can't help it, this dark path I've taken. You can't choose whom you fall in love with. And to you, my new beloved: be still my heart.

technorati tags: shopping, childhood, Tom_Hanks, NYC, love