Romeo and Juliet--3 (then she is well and nothing can be ill)

Romeo and Juliet committed suicide before they got to register for wedding gifts. Jackie and I were not so lucky. Just kidding, I couldn't resist. But today we went to Bed Bath & Beyond to register. I think the concept of Bed Bath etc is "the store with everything no one could possibly ever need." I mean, really, who needs a $500 garment steamer? A garment steamer? Why should an iron cost $80? It's like this all through the store.

So, we go in and say that we need to register. Immediately this 19 year old girl takes over. Asks us a bunch of questions, has us fill out some paperwork, fine, fine, normal. Then, without pause or transition, says that she wants to show us something before we get started. She takes a coffee mug off of a shelf, places it upside down on the ground, and says "Okay, sir, I'm going to ask you to stand on this."

Where does the authority of sales people come from? It's like interrogators, where you get them to answer simple questions that don't matter, and then you get them into a rhythm and they just keep going until they give you the info you need. "You" here being the interrogator. So, I stand on the cup and neither it nor my ankle breaks, so I'm feeling good, the sales lady feels good, I guess the cup is okay. It's at least not broken. Then the lady says "Impressive, huh? So, I'll just go ahead and add this to your registry..."

Here, her spell broke, thankfully. But we still followed meekly as she led us to the knife sales guy and announced "These people have some questions they want to ask you about cutlery." Liar. We willingly felt out the balance of the blade and handle, blah blah blah, but refused to ask questions.

As my mom said: functionality as a stepping stool is not a key criterion for my dishes. Or something like that.

Romeo and Juliet are dead. I've always found the line in the title of this post haunting. It's how Romeo's man, Balthasar, tells him that Juliet is dead (she isn't, but Balthasar doesn't know that). Romeo says something like "tell me Juliet's well, for if she is well than nothing can be ill." And Balthasar says something like "then she is well and nothing can be ill." Oh, God, it breaks my heart.

Registering for gifts today, I couldn't help but consider how Jackie and I compare against Romeo and Juliet. Not a "who's better" thing, but just "what similarities?" Probably not many. In fact, in general I advise not comparing yourself to, or emulating, these two. Is the woman in your relationship thirteen years old? If so, you have a similarity with this great love story, and you should be in prison. Has the man in your relationship ever killed the woman's cousin? If so, you have a similarity with this great love story, and he should be in prison. Has a friar ever given you a special potion that will fake your own death and have you buried in the family crypt for a couple of days until your banished husband can sneak in and steal you out of the city only it doesn't work because of a sudden outbreak of the plague or something and so your husband never hears that you're only fake dead and instead thinks that you're really dead and so runs back to town, kills your fiance with a sword and himself with a poison that he bought from a poor apothecary? If so, you have a similarity with this play and I advise you to get up, leave the crypt, turn the friar over to the cops, and then go far far away to college where you can experiment with same-sex relationships before graduating with honors, thus enabling you to get a job all the way out of Italy, because things aren't really going to get any better there by the twentieth century.

I think Paris would have been very good at registering for gifts.