Monday, March 26, 2018
Every now and then I get this violent urge (not so much the violence) to hit up the stores and shop. Or I enjoy the clever convenience of online store browsing. There’s something freshly satisfying about clicking on something you want, and boomp(!) instant gratification and it arrives at your house a few days later. I am lucky in the way that even though I work 8 to 5 I have a person that can pick up my package at the house for me so I never have to worry about missing or lost packages. It’s amazing that nowadays you can click a few buttons and either pick up in store or for a little option shipping cost get it right to your house. This wasn’t even available several years ago. And why would I want to pickup at the store when I can save some gas and steps. Though I’m not fat or lazy I’m all for saving time because time is more valuable and isn’t renewable like money. I also believe that some things you experience at the store like picking up your vegetables and feeling and smelling it or being able to hear the music while shopping and walking around the flowers and bakery and deli section can’t be duplicated. Sometimes shopping is a social outlet. I see people going to the market and stand and partially obstruct aisles while they talk to someone they haven’t seen in a while. I’m sure they could have picked up a phone and reached out to the person anytime but they just happened to run across each other and now want to reconnect after all these years. I know, it’s happened to me where I’ve run across exes or people I used to date and go hey what’s up, how’s life going. Let’s get together and see if we can see if we still have anything even more in common now that we’re older and wiser and more wrinkles… Shopping is like a literal meat market and cornucopia of fun sights and sounds. It’s like going to a festival except you have seen where most of the displays before and wait, why did your store reorganize the cereals to aisle 15 and the canned corn to aisle 7. Now the whole world is upside down and you’re wasted more time trying to look for your cans of lima and butter beans cause it’s taking 5 minutes longer and you just want to go home and play on the Internet and the whole shopping trip is becoming a social event because now you have to actually talk to an attendant. Luckily these people usually leave you alone. Talking to strangers? What’s that? And then there are occasionally free samples that probably should be labelled for allergens and expiration date. And there are the self-checkouts which are the only way to get through stores like Walmart that somehow never seem to have enough cashiers. One good thing about shopping is that they often open late and you can go into some 24-hour places and get some grub on the go.
