My Brooks walking shoes had holes in the toes. I showed my parents.

“Let’s get you new shoes,” Mom said.

Didn’t want to go shopping. Hate shopping. Would’ve rather done something else. But went with them anyway. Assumed long lines would be at the stores.

We drove to the electronics store first to look at the new Xbox. My parents are old school, or just old, and still worry about saving money. Will go to great lengths to save fifty dollars on something. If something is so greatly expensive, what’s fifty dollars? The electronics store had a sale on the console. Its original price was over four hundred dollars, but on Black Friday was on sale for fifty dollars less with a game for thirty dollars less than its original price as well, the disc version, not the digital download version.

Dad threw a fit at the counter. The console didn’t have a DVD drive for the disc, so I would have to download the game instead. Was fine with that, but he wasn’t.

“How can we make this work?” he asked.

The store employee didn’t know.

I would’ve paid the extra thirty dollars to download the game. Wasn’t a problem with me, but to Dad it was.

“Show him the game,” he said to me.

So to cool him down, I led the associate to the Xbox section in the store. Came to find out there was no such coupon of any sort for a digital download. Didn’t bother me, but it bothered my dad.

“Let’s try another place,” he said. He had to save money on the game.

Would’ve been nice to just buy the damn thing and get it over with.

We went shoe shopping at the same shopping center. I tried on a few pairs of shoes. Didn’t like spending copious hours shopping anywhere. No more than an hour, tops. Most of the shoes were ugly. Running shoes typically are. They have those long, thick, white sides at the bottom that aren’t very attractive. The most attractive ones, ironically, are the least comfortable ones. Tried on a pair of green Adidas running shoes, not for running but for walking. Felt fine except they were size 13’s, and my heels slid when I walked around. Too big. Would’ve caused a blister. So I tried on a pair of size 12’s. A little too small. My big toe bunched up against the end of the shoe. I have weird feet. They’re average size, but my large toe is abnormally long compared to my other toes. My feet would probably fit in a size 10 without my big toe. If I could chop it off, I wouldn’t have as much trouble trying on shoes. My ideal size is 12 1/2. They make such sizes, but they’re not common enough. Would have to specially order them. Who wants to do that? Just wanted to buy the shoes and get out of there, which I did. Didn’t care too much about the discomfort of walking around with bunched-up toes.

“Why don’t you get two pairs?” Mom said.

“Two pairs for what?” I said.

“For when the other pair gets worn out. You can get the green pair and this blue pair.”

The blue pair was navy blue, not as attractive as the green pair, but it depended on what clothes I would wear them with. The green pair wouldn’t match all of my clothes. Assuming the blue color matched more clothes. I went with her suggestion.

We checked out at the front. Each pair of shoes cost about sixty dollars. A deal since most shoes today cost around a hundred.

We walked back to their car in the parking lot. When we got there, I sat in the trunk of their SUV, put on the new pair of green Adidas, and stuffed my old pair of black Brooks in the new shoe box.

“Here, I’ll throw it out,” Dad said.

I gave him the shoe box. “If you see a homeless man, why don’t you give them to him?”

“Ah, we’ll see,” he said.

When he walked off, Mom and I waited for him to come back. But after ten minutes, he was still gone.

“Where the hell is he?” I asked.

“Who knows?” she said. “Probably lost.”

Wouldn’t have been a surprise, given his age, that he did get lost somewhere in the shopping center. I’d watched the news just the other night and saw a story about an old man missing somewhere in Thousand Oaks. Some of them just wandered off and forgot where they were.

So Mom and I cruised the parking lot in the car in search of him but couldn’t find him.

“Why don’t you call him?” I asked.

Mom had her phone connected to the dashboard.

“Not a bad idea,” she said. “Hey, Siri, call my husband.”

“Calling your husband,” Siri said.

The phone rang over four times. He finally answered.

“Where the hell are you?” she said.

“Behind the store,” he said. “Couldn’t find a decent trash can.”

I saw one at the store entrance. Maybe he didn’t see it.

We drove behind the store and found him without the shoe box.

Mom pressed the button for her window to go down. “Get in,” she said.

He climbed into the backseat and groaned from his sciatica.

“What took you so long?” she asked.

“Couldn’t find a trash can big enough to fit the shoe box,” he said.

The way he thought, a trash can had to fit the shoe box perfectly not to damage the box. If I’d done it, I probably would’ve taken the shoes out of the box, ripped the box up until it would fit, and thrown it in with the shoes. That’s just me.

We waited at a stop light behind other cars to leave the shopping center. A surprise that there weren’t any lines at the stores, yet no surprise in the age of online retail. People are wise enough not to drive to these places anymore when they can have the products delivered to them.

I remember my father and uncle used to camp out in front of stores before the sun came up on Black Friday. Over twenty years ago. Sometimes, things change for the better, but not most things.