Cold Spots

[Pantechnicon]

Cold Spots
By “Pantechnicon”

Believers in paranormal phenomena such as ghosts assert the existence of something they refer to as a “cold spot”. This is an area of a room or a house in which the air will feel significantly cooler than that in the surrounding area. Believers in the paranormal theorize that these cold spots mark either the location where someone died, or that these cold spots are the perceivable manifestation of actual ghosts. And incredibly, I experience these bizarre sensations all the time...in K-Mart.

It’s not every K-Mart, mind you. I only feel the cold spots in the older stores; ones that were built before 1980. There are still quite a few around, usually free-standing locations in older or poorer neighborhoods. Sometimes they’re part of a dilapidated strip mall whose other tenants have long since departed. Sometimes they’re not even K-Marts anymore, but only the shells of old stores which have been converted into large indoor flea markets or car dealerships. It doesn’t matter whether it’s still a K-Mart or not because I can still feel the cold spot.

The cold spots I feel are not the vestige of dead persons. Instead they mark the spots where I can remember that K-Mart would always place the kiosks for the videogame consoles of the early 1980’s. In particular I remember the Atari 2600 kiosk very well. It was a wide behemoth with a large white sign and several glass-doored drawers used for both display and storage of boxed cartridges. There would usually be a mid-sized color television set up in the middle. In front of this television would be mounted a 4-switch woodgrain 2600. Instead of regular controllers there was a pair of arcade-style joystick and paddle controllers mounted into the front panel.

I remember all of this vividly because I spent a great deal of my free time in the summer of 1982 in the local K-Mart playing games on this kiosk. I had my own Atari at home, but during the summer left it largely untouched in favor of K-Mart’s kiosk. Why would I ignore my own Atari in favor of K-Mart’s? There are many reasons. The K-Mart kiosk had more games than I did. I believe it had 25 games attached to the kiosk, compared to my runty personal collection of only 5 cartridges. The kiosk used a color television, whereas at home I was required to keep my Atari attached to a tiny black-and-white set. K-Mart had air-conditioning and my house did not. Lastly, my mother encouraged me to not sit around the house all day during the summer playing Atari. I should, she said, go out and ride my bike to get some exercise. So I would ride my bike approximately one mile to K-Mart, play Atari for a while, and ride back home. I agree that this was lame. But at least in deference to Mom, I wasn’t sitting around the house (in fact, to play at the K-Mart kiosk, I had to stand for three or four hours at a time. It wasn’t exactly comfortable).

Obviously I do not believe that there is a supernatural cause for my feeling the kiosk cold spots. The phenomenon is easily explainable. Given how much time I spent in one particular K-Mart, on one particular spot and performing one particular activity, it should not be surprising that I still feel a mental pull towards the location from which the Atari kiosk has sadly long since vanished. Furthermore, since retail stores like K-Mart tend to be built and arranged with a strong sense of conformity to one another, it should not seem like such a stretch that this sensation is invoked whenever I walk into any K-Mart that was built with the same general dimensions and layout. I have felt the cold spot not just in the K-Mart in my hometown, but in stores across the country. If my wife happens to be with me in a K-Mart, she wonders why I always seem inclined to wander off. If she knew the truth she’d think I was insane: “I’m just looking for the Atari kiosk, honey. I’ll play one round of Adventure then I’ll catch back up with you.”

I wonder if the young people I see these days in the Targets, Wal-Marts, Gamestops etc., all elbowing each other around the X-Box 360 or Nintendo DS kiosks will one day feel the same sense of emptiness I do when the kiosks representing their favorite machines are sent off to the landfill?