Ghost of Dollar Stores Past

“It happened on a busy afternoon around Christmas, just like this one,” I told my friend and the cashier at the Dollarama.  One was running me through the checkout and the other one was waiting for me to be run through the checkout.  It wasn’t the ideal place for a ghost story, but I couldn’t have asked for a better setting for that particular ghost story.  I continued, “At a Dollarama just like this one.”  I paused for dramatic effect, even though I was still loading things onto the counter.  

I proceeded in slow dramatic tones, “I had a cart and I was buying some cute decorative boxes that came folded up.  There weren’t very many to choose from, but I got the last of the cute ones.  I thought I was lucky.  I continued shopping, but I turned my back on my cart for one minute, maybe not even a whole minute, and that’s when it happened.  I didn’t notice that anything was different until I went through the checkout.  All the cute boxes I had put in my cart were gone and they had been replaced with the ugly boxes I had refused to buy.  Someone had seen I had the nice ones and replaced them with the ugly ones in my cart when I wasn’t looking.”

“Did you see who did it?”

“No!  I was at Londonderry Mall in Edmonton!  Have you ever been in there around Christmas time?  Sheesh!  No.  That place was a complete zoo.  That store had so much traffic they had to move it to the other side of the mall and double its floor space.  No, I did not see who did it.  All I knew was that I had to use ugly obviously dollar store boxes for my Christmas favors that year.  It blew!”

In retrospect, I think I was making socks look like cupcakes and surrounding them with hand-made foil-wrapped chocolates.

Anyway, Christmas ghost story for ya.  You’re welcome.  And to whoever took my boxes… what nerve!