Story 110: You’ve Been Stone Souped

            He saw his best friend sitting outside the department store’s changing room.

           “What’s this?  I thought you said you’d never go clothes shopping with your wife again after the last four-hour extravaganza.”

            “I know.  She asked me to come with her to pick out a new CD player, then she saw the washer-dryer section and said we need a new one `cause ours is ready to explode.  After spending $800, we were passing by the clothes section and she was sucked into the vortex, never to be seen again.  And so I wait.”

            “Oh man, you were totally Stone Souped!”

            “I was what?”

            “You know that story, ‘Stone Soup’?  A man begs food from a woman who says she doesn’t have any when she really does and she’s just being selfish, so he says all he wants is Stone Soup and he’ll show her how to make it.  She falls for it and lets him come in, so he gives her a random stone and tells her to put it in a pot of water over a fire, and as it’s boiling, he tastes the water and is all, ‘Yummy, but it needs some salt,’ and ‘Delicious, but it needs some rosemary,’ and ‘Almost done, but it needs some carrots, celery, potatoes, and a whole flipping chicken!’  Or something like that.  Anyway, it’s so gradual and small at first that the mark, I mean the old lady, doesn’t realize he’s conned her into giving him actual food until soup’s done!  It was delicious.”

            “Wait, you’re saying that I’m the selfish old lady, and my wife’s the beggar man, only instead of cooking, I’ve been tricked into shopping?!”

            “Yep.  It’s pretty much a standard bait-and-switch.”

            “I don’t believe it!  I actually fell for the old ‘just picking up one thing’ gag!  And on Black Friday, no less!  I must be mad!”

            “Not mad, just Stone Souped.”

            “Boy, is she going to get an earful of the silent treatment when we’re standing on the massive lines and enduring the hours of traffic on the ride home!  She hates the silent treatment!”

            “That’s the spirit – you show her with your muteness!”

            “I will!  When she finally gets out of there…  Wait a minute.  What are you doing here at the mall?”

            “I never speak from inexperience, my friend.”