October 14th, 2007On this day in different years

Odaiba

Window Shopping

"Wow, look at that thing!" exclaimed Yasha excitedly.

He was pointing at a metallic spiral decoration that was hanging in a nearby store's window display. The thing was rotating slowly, catching the suns rays with a succession of concentric rings, causing circular rainbows to travel up and down its circumference.

We spent about thirty seconds observing at the play of light and color before directing our attention to the rest of the display, which turned out to otherwise contain a bunch of designer glasses.

"It's an optical store," said Dina. "I don't think this thing is for sale here."

"Well, it's really cool!" Yasha found a shiny thing and wasn't going to give up quite so easily. "I'm going to go ask them if maybe they know where I can get it."

He was halfway towards the store entrance when for the first time someone noticed a paper sign beneath the thing that caught our attention. Written by hand in black marker, it was a bit at odds with the rest of the display, which had bright professionally printed photos and shiny merchandise.

"Yasha, come back here! Read this thing! I don't think you're the first to be interested!" someone yelled. The rest of us were laughing.

Confused and cautious, Yasha walked back slowly. Conflicting emotions were plain on his face: on one hand, he wanted the shiny spiral; on the other, he was not about to miss out on what everyone else found so funny. He read the sign carefully:

"Decoration not for sale. We don't know where you can buy it. Please don't ask."