Where's Waldo?

It's his birthday this summer and I am in Farmington with my friend, Ahanna, on a scavenger hunt for him. Sometimes my quirky little college town surprises me with its activities. Today we prowl 20 great stores for Waldo, collecting cards from their workers as we go. And its a family conscious town which means not only will Waldo not be in the wine but he also will not always be at a 5'5" eye level! It's actually quite fun!
   On my lunch break this morning I went to Reny's for lamp oil(Yay living Green!) Whilst checking out, I looked at a Maine display and discovered the three inch tall cardboard cut-out. That's when I remembered the article I had read on the local bookstore's webpage, announcing the July antics they had planned.
     The way its planned is that you scan a store for Waldo, sneakily(or not haha) tell the cashier, and they sign a card with the store's name on it. Eight cards gets the first 100 people a button and sixteen out of twenty earns you a spot in the July party raffle.
   Post-check out, I texted Ahanna and said
"I have something fun for us to do when I get out of work(3:30), walk and I can drive you home." With no other clues, my surprise was started. Either this would go awesome or I would look really dumb. She met me at 3:30 and I began to fill her in. She was enthused.
   We began our hunt at DDG, where we got the initial list of participating stores. From there we circled around Downtown and learned fun thing about those participating. Some were more aware of children than others(Twice Sold Tales) and others changed Waldo's location each day(Liquid Sunshine). Along the way, we found trinkets we wanted to go back for and ended up signed up for some other cool raffles, timed with the start of the July hunt.
   People thought we were a little silly but mostly fun. We played like reasonable adults, using our own sight to earn our own card -instead of 'four eyes are better than two.' And many store people can vouch for this.(While I wrote the initial start of this blog I was lounging in a Reny's beach display while Ahanna searched for the Waldo I had found at lunch. The Reny's people got a kick out of that.) At one point we were 'competing' with two maybe-twelve year olds and kept bouncing in front or behind one another. Those girl had adapted our 'each for their own' attitude, but also had adapted out 'patiently waiting' rule, staying cool and not gloating while the other still searched. It was a great Wednesday really.