Sometimes, after a day of stocking up on provisions at Costco, I think if the Zombie Apocalypse has to happen this is the best day for me. I should be able to ride out a week or so locked down in my apartment and keep my fingers crossed that someone in charge will figure out how to stop them from attacking.
On the other hand, on the day before shopping at Costco, I dread thinking about having to dodge zombies while knocking on my neighbors door for a roll of toilet paper.
My friend Chris gave me this bag over 30 years ago. The picture doesn’t do it justice. The cloth handles are thread bare and every time I use it I fear that this will be the last time, but some big grocery shopping is done and we need to take the old girl out of retirement.
Numerous grocery store employees have complimented us on the bags depth and width. It can hold oversized and odd shape boxes so invaluable for transporting food for pot lucks and such.
So just a shout out to it’s years of service.
As I get older, I am beginning to understand my peculiarities that stumped me before but are beginning to make sense now. I used to think I hated shopping. Any shopping. I did everything in my power to get in and then get out with whatever I thought I needed.
I thought, for the longest time, this hatred of shopping placed me on some superior moral ground. The capitalist overlords failed to entice me into a life of mindless consumerism. Something occurred to me as I was dodging super large shopping carts in Costco the other day. It isn’t so much that I hated shopping, it is more that shopping overwhelms me. I can feel my nerves begin to jangle every time I enter a store.
I can manage shopping if I have a list with specific items to be acquired by the time I return home. I find. I buy. I leave the store as quickly as possible. I rarely, if ever, will buy more than what is on the list. The list is sacrosanct.
On the other hand just lallygagging in a store to kill time almost always ends the same way — me fleeing after a few minutes without purchasing anything.
For example, I love to read so bookstores should be heaven for me. Not by a stretch. I want to purchase almost every book I pick up. Everything sounds like something I would like to buy, so much so that I reach fairly quickly a point of indecision. I can’t choose anything because I want everything which I know that I neither can afford nor will ever find the time to read them. So I punt and buy nothing.
Big ticket items provide a somewhat different problem for me. I don’t have a vision of what I want. If I am buy a car, all I want is something that moves me from place to place with a minimum of problems. A lot of friends I know walk into car lots with a strategy of getting specific things they want, and how to maneuver the salesman into giving them the deal they want. They know all the bells and whistles they want to purchase. All I want is a compact white Ford.
Worst of all, choice just baffles me. The more options I have the more stumped I become. Two or three choices I can manage. More than that I am wondering how I can get out of this showroom without looking like an asshole.
What I am saying is that shopping is overwhelming for me. I don’t so much hate it as all these products and choices leave my mind so overstimulated that I my mind is whirling with all the choices and I become exhausted and all I want to do is go home and take a long nap. This is why I hate shopping.
Mind Stewing, Fingers Typing 