The sounds of Christmas, in B-flat BEEP!

This time of year, the sounds of Christmas cheer are everywhere: Santa's jolly ho-ho-ho, strangers wishing you "Happy Holidays!", "I want a hippopotamus for Christmas" playing on the radio an estimated 8,497 times per season, etc. And at the malls we hear the joyous strains of:

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
Please return to the nearest service counter. It seems we have neglected to remove the security tag from your purchase. We apologize for the inconvenience and for making you feel like a criminal.

At least, those are the sounds I hear when I go Christmas shopping. I -- and of course anyone within 900 yards of me -- hear BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! when I go into stores, and BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! when I come out. At first this curious occurrence did not seem to have anything to do with me, because of course I had not stolen anything, although I checked my bags to make sure. I figured it must be whoever I happened to be walking out of the store with, and I would look at them with suitable disdain. But then sensors started beeping when there was no one else around. After a couple of incidents I waited to go into or out of a store until someone else was also going in or out, so as to transfer any suspicion aroused from me to them, which may seem pretty unscrupulous. But, in my defense, I did drop the look of disdain.

Despite this maneuver, my palms started getting sweaty whenever I was about to enter or leave a store. I conducted reconnaissance to make sure no salespeople were in proximity. I began to feel that I was guilty. I figured it was only a matter of time before some security person tackled me. And sure enough, finally the inevitable happened:

Nothing.

No one rushed to stop me. No one even called out to me. I went to every store in the mall with a trail of BEEPs! behind me, and no one did a thing.

It happened again when I was shopping with my sister. After an entire day of being at the mall without hearing any BEEPs!, we walked into a department store, and immediately a bevy of BEEPs! announced our arrival. I began to think someone had planted a security tag somewhere inside me, making me a walking Stolen Item.

Rather than do something sensible, like go to the nearest salesperson or return to the last store we'd purchased something from, we decided to conduct an experiment of our own to identify the offending item. "You wait here," my sister said. "I'll go through with my stuff."

She walked out. BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! I gave her my look of disdain.

"Ah HA!" I said. "It's not me."

But when she came back through, there was no beep.

"You go through," she said.

I went through and came back in. Both times, BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

"Ah HA!" she said. "It's not me."

This went on for about five minutes, during which time not one salesperson came to see why the sensor was going off every three seconds. A couple of customers gave us odd looks, but we merely continued on as if this was something completely normal that we did every day.

One of us would remove some items and go through with a few other things. Sometimes we beeped, and we thought we had identified the offender. "Ah HA!" we would say. "It's the jeans from Old Navy!" But then the jeans would not beep on the way back in, and something else would beep on the next trip out. "Ah HA!" we would say. "It's the Hogan's Heroes DVD we bought for Dad!"

As you can see, this was a very scientific experiment.

Finally my sister went through without holding anything, not even her purse.

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

We gave up and went home. And no one stopped us.

In time, we figure BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! will be heard so often at this time of year that it just may rank right up there with the all-time favorite Christmas songs.

Which do not, in my opinion, have anything to do with hippopotamuses.