Bizarre sight at Gold Coast shopping centre
People often get the Christmas crazies at this time of year – as illustrated by a bizarre incident in a Gold Coast shopping centre car park. Here’s what witnesses say happened.
Gold Coast
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Christmas is a funny time of year.
All sorts of scenes we don’t normally encounter are suddenly ubiquitous.
There are people dressed as elves, assisting a jolly red fellow to pose for pictures.
Red noses and antlers affixed to some cars.
Groups of people breaking into song in public places.
And then there’s the chaos in the aisles and car parks of our major shopping emporiums, prompted in no small part by that most curious of Christmas characters, the shopping centre numpty.
You know the sort. People who leave their Christmas shopping to the last moment and find themselves, against their better judgment and in a welter of dread and panic, making for Pac Fair or Robina or Harbour Town. Places they would not normally go, but are venturing into on the one occasion when absolutely everyone on the Gold Coast appears to be there.
The Saint Nicks of our families, getting the presents sorted in the nick of time.
The frenzy – for a frenzy it is – can lead to some unusual behaviour.
Take this example, posted anonymously on Monday to the Labrador 4215 Facebook page.
“They call this ‘the silly Season’. What I witnessed this morning at the Harbour Town car park was beyond ‘silly’, it was downright lunacy,” the person reported.
“A middle-aged male was ‘saving’ a car space for his mate with a 4x4 by standing in the space.
“A woman in a small white car approached that particular space, attempting to ‘edge’ in. The MAM (middle-aged male) was gesticulating madly and yelling to her that the space was ‘saved’. He then threw himself down on the bitumen and lay in the space so that the woman couldn’t enter! If that is not certifiable behaviour, I don’t know what is.”
In the spirit of the season, which includes dreadful Christmas cracker jokes, might I suggest this gentleman was being somewhat ’elfish.
More curious again was an Adelaide man who last month allegedly drove a car festooned with Christmas lights and baubles down a pedestrian shopping street.
Police accused him of drink-driving and driving in a dangerous manner.
It’s clear some people are close to a festive breaking point, as another stressed shopper admitted this week in a post to the ‘MomCave TV’ Facebook account.
“It’s official: I’ve reached that stage of December where even Mariah Carey can make me emotional in the toilet paper aisle. Between the holiday music, my mile-long shopping list, and the kids asking if we can buy literally everything in sight, I’m one ‘All I Want For Christmas’ away from a complete breakdown in housewares.”
Why, one wonders, do we do this to ourselves each and every year. Haven’t we learned from last year?
Clearly not.
In fact, some of us struggle to learn from even last week. That will soon be proven on another annual shopping event.
Think it’s crazy in the aisles and car parks of Gold Coast shopping centres now? Wait until you see Boxing Day.
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Originally published as Bizarre sight at Gold Coast shopping centre
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