Shopping
is worse than travel because it is not easily avoided. Sometimes one has to go shopping 3 or 4
times a week. Shopping involves moving
which – as I’ve already explained – makes you feel old.
Grocery shopping for me is such a
pain that I plan it in detail – which aisles, can size, flavor of cookies,
possible substitutes, etc. For each 15
minutes of grocery shopping, and I rarely spend more than 15 minutes, I spend
45 minutes of planning. You can sit
still and plan. Grocery stores should
make available a gizmo that, as you made your grocery list, the gizmo would
arrange the list in the same order as they appear in the aisles. You wouldn’t have to backtrack. I might try to learn to use a piece of
technology like that. Imagine not having
to read a grocery list each time you entered a new aisle searching for
scattered items. The gizmo would say
“Aisle 6 – dried prunes on the left hand side in the middle, pabulum on the
right near the end.” Why hasn’t that
been invented? If we can go to the
moon, why…oh, never mind.
Besides grocery shopping there is
– horror of horrors – shopping for clothes.
Luckily I don’t have to do as much of that as I used to. When you’re gainfully employed you worry
more about your attire. Will I have to
dig a ditch in the mud? Does this tie
go with this shirt? That type of
thing. When you’re retired it’s a great
relief to find that bathrobes last a long time. My wife insists on accompanying me when I shop for clothes. She says my color coordination isn’t the
best. (I have some color blindness.) Her being along means that a 5 minute trip
to buy a new suit, 3 dress shirts, 6 pairs of shorts, a pair of loafers, and 4
pairs of socks can stretch into a half hour.
“Honey, try these shorts.
Michael looks so good in them.”
My wife, I notice, likes to
shop. She doesn’t make a list but just
wanders the aisles looking and looking.
The lack of a list means that she can buy anything she wants. She’s free.
After several hours of shopping, as she’s checking out, she sometimes
finds it’s all in vain because she has forgotten her credit card. But she’s not upset at all. In fact, she says it’s probably for the best
because she didn’t want any of the stuff anyway. We try to avoid shopping together.
Every few years we have to buy a
new car. Last time was when our Edsel’s
left rear fender rusted off. We – my
wife likes this approach - have made a science of it. We shop by looking at reviews in the popular consumer
magazines. We know what we want –
something made for old farts. We
compare the options available. Does one
have to hand crank to start it? We’re
getting too old for that. Most have
gotten rid of the spark advance as well – a pity. We look at the price.
After we decide what we want, we get the print out of the dealer’s cost
of the car and each of the options. We
walk into our local dealer and wave the printout about. Most of the salespeople disappear and then
we casually walk around looking at the most expensive vehicles on the showroom
floor. That usually tempts a junior
sales associate out of their cubicle and they say the fateful words, “Can I
help you?”
An hour later we have signed a
sales contract – giving the dealer a respectful, but not exorbitant profit –
and have a two-week wait. No dealer ever
has exactly the car with the color and options we want but they locate a dealer
in Outer Mongolia that does and they have to ship it in. The first time I drive a new car is after
I’ve bought it. The hardest thing to
learn is how to turn on the wipers.
© 2014 Lester C. Welch
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