SHOPPING: NOT FOR THE SQUEAMISH

My wife had a day off on Friday and we went shopping. I believe that I have mentioned my outright hatred for this process in past writings. It hasn’t gotten any better with age.
Something about the active pursuit of bargains on meaningless material objects offends my post hippie sensibilities. Or maybe it’s something else.

But for some reason, in an effort to be a good and supportive spouse, I went along with the program yesterday. We started locally at the old K-Mart store where she had seen some advertised specials. No luck there. The bargains were out of stock. It wasn’t too bad in that store though. It was fairly early in the day and we could roam around the aisles without being maimed by shopping carts being shoved along by overweight grannies on an assassination mission. But we needed to move on.

Let me explain something before I go on to the next store. Holiday shopping before Thanksgiving is somehow un-natural. Last year I did almost all my Christmas shopping from the comfort of the chair I’m sitting in right now. December 18th was soon enough for whatever was ordered to arrive by the big day. So my dear wife’s idea of spacing out the shopping so that the financial burden is lighter and bargains can be found, while practical, is anathema to me. In spite of my protests about losing the spirit of Christmas and losing the spontaneity of heartfelt giving we were out there shopping three weeks before a single turkey was consumed.

Our next stop was a big old national chain type toy store. The parking lot was fairly crowded and the inside of the store matched that. Again we were on a quest for a couple of bargain items advertised in the newspaper. Again we were disappointed to find that we were too late in one case and too early in another. The new Democrat administration should enact some consumer protection laws about advertising crap that isn’t in stock. While waiting for the official word from the customer service people that our items were not in stock I looked around at the folks shopping in the store. Most of the customers were women, some with small children in tow. Most had carts full of overpriced toys which were carrying advertising for other toys, movies or TV shows. The trend of using one product to sell two or three others is an amazing phenomenon. And then the other trend of selling toys that require collecting a series of characters or equipment to complete a set is also a disturbing marketing ploy. My older grandson has been hooked into this in a big way with Star Wars products, Lego Bionicle toys, Transformers and some newer Indiana Jones items also from Lego. Even the little kids are trapped into this mentality with Thomas the train engine stuff. We left this store without feeding either of the grandkids’ habits.

We (she) decided to drive the forty miles south to the beach area outlet centers. We had a quick lunch and then proceeded to drive in moderate to heavy traffic down the highway. Again the thought occurred to me that there were an awful lot of early shoppers, and that in spite of a terrible economy they were buying a lot of stuff. Just the day before I had heard news reports of a sharp downturn in consumer purchasing and a projection for the worst Holiday season in years. Some of these reporter types really need to come to Delaware and check us out. Maybe it’s because we have no sales tax but it’s obvious that most of our stores are not ready to close their doors yet.

We got to the first group of outlet stores and drove around for a few minutes before we found a parking place. As we went up and down the aisles I noticed license plates from Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Virginia and of course Delaware. The wide range of out of state shoppers would indicate that the sales tax thing is coming into play. Or shopping is just an activity that beach going tourists enjoy. But it is November so shopping is probably on their minds more than sunning themselves on the beach.

We went into a store that calls itself a “décor enhancement center”. I walked all over the jammed up pseudo-aisles of that place and couldn’t find one thing that would enhance my décor. Other folks obviously disagree with me because they were buying the knick-knacks, “art” and decorative items like starving people swarming onto the back of the UN rice delivery truck. (Note the obviously ironic comparison) After leaving that place we moved on to an L.L. Bean outlet store. Now this was more in tune with my tastes. But after browsing around looking for some fishing equipment or camp gear I found very little merchandise in that vein. The place was full of clothes and shoes. It was also full of vaguely disoriented men tagging along after women who were bargain grabbing with a vengeance. Apparently I was one of those guys. We all had hoped for something interesting and were instead stuck in a yuppie clothing store answering the usual questions with non-committal head nods and “uh-huhs”. The only guys enjoying that store were the two gay couples trying on shoes. But my wife was thrilled to find some shirts for our grandsons that were on sale for 95 cents. Yes that’s a correct figure. And they aren’t too bad either. They did come out of China and they must have been a poor seller, but they weren’t ugly and they were made pretty well. So now my wife was buoyed up by getting a fantastic bargain and was fully in the hunt again.

We next went into a place called the Kitchen Collection store. I like these kinds of stores. Even if I don’t need anything I can look around at all the great inventions designed to ease the labors of us poor overworked Americans. The imagination used in the creation of some of these gadgets, or in the refinement of old standard kitchen tools and utensils, is a wondrous thing. I saw twenty different kinds of blenders, dozens of electric mixers, toaster ovens, convection ovens, microwave ovens and hundreds of accessories for all of them. If you need a tool to make sculptures out of garlic cloves they have it. If you need a computer program to put near the family room bar so you too can mix an exotic drink from some South Pacific bar, you can find it in this store. It was possible to spot the guys who were really getting tired of shopping because they kind of hung around the area where the sharp and interesting knives were displayed, furtively glancing first at the knives then at their wives. My wife dragged me out of there before I reached that stage.

So we went on to several more stores. She made a few purchases. I watched people.
The shoppers were pretty representative of the general population, maybe skewed a bit towards the more affluent folks. But there was racial diversity and religious diversity, if Muslim type headwear and yarmulkes are valid evidence. And the majority of these folks were buyers. In my wanderings I overheard many conversations. Some of the talk went beyond the usual discussions of prices and quality of the merchandise. There were conversations of a personal nature about who was sleeping with whom, how the kids were doing and how the latest liposuction went. I also heard a couple of conversations about the recent election and most of the people involved in those discussions were pleased with the outcome. I wonder if they will be so pleased when the next Christmas season, or the one after that, comes around and their disposable income has diminished significantly due to higher taxes. We’ll see, I guess.

After visiting two of these outlet centers and going into about fourteen stores I’d reached my limit for shopping and my wife, being both observant and kind, called it quits. So we dined at a Mexican restaurant nearby and I ate a meal guaranteed to make the ride home more aromatic. After all she’s the one who wanted to drive an hour to do some shopping, so she had to suffer the consequences, at least a little bit.

Have a fine day.