My Shopping Adventures

Readers will doubtless conclude from the title that the author, despite his protestations that he did in fact regain his full measure of manliness after the Banana Bliss Body Swirl fiasco, has really been so irretrievably entrapped in femininity as to cause said readers to decide that they will no longer read said author’s writing. The author begs to differ. There really is an explanation that should ease your minds; only the timing of it makes it suspect.
You see, only today I decided I’d go out shopping with my mother. Skeptical minds will now see in this proof not only that the Great Banana sucked my brain fully out of my head, but also that I have now grown to love shopping. Such is not the case – I needed a pair of shoes. This explanation is most unfortunate, given the fact that ladies love to spend their money on shoes. But I stand by it, and shall stand by it against all comers.
You see, I am cheap. No more need be said in order for you to grasp the full reason for why I rarely shop and need new shoes. I realize that you get what you pay for, and since I pay very little, I get very little. A couple pairs of shoes ago (maybe a year in chronological time), I paid ten bucks. Sure, they fell apart rather quickly, but I still kept them far longer than most people would have. My most recent pair (slightly more expensive) was in such disrepair as to scream for a replacement, and so I obeyed. I reluctantly shelled out over twenty dollars for these ones – and I didn’t even get a picture of Michael Jordan on them for my trouble. I should get another year out of them by my calculation.
That is all I got at the store today – sum total. For the most part, I stayed true to my personal adage of “Looking is not buying”. If you ever take me shopping with you, this will always hold true. I will look, but to ever see me take out my wallet for any reason at all would be akin to seeing a shooting star – you have to look a second time to make sure you saw it, and by then it’s gone. And forget it if you think I will take out said wallet on behalf of said shopping companion. It had better be your birthday or Christmas or some other good excuse.
Thus I rarely shop, and when I go out to the store, it is because I enjoy looking at (not buying) items for sale and watching the rich spectacle of human life which may always be found in a public place if you only look for it. The main point of this article (besides defending my manliness against skeptics) is to share with you some of my observations of human life in public places.
First, let us examine store music. It is everywhere, and I have yet to go into a store in which it is not present. It is as if the current generation (and several before it, no doubt) has decided that silence is not golden at all, and that constant noise must be added to the general ambience. A few stores I have been in have played classical music or oldies, and this I can stand. But as a general rule, you will hear in stores some of the dumbest music ever written. Maybe you might be able to blame my negative view on the fact that I couldn’t identify a member of the Top 40 if I were pressed to do it at gunpoint. In any case, when I hear such songs it makes me wonder about the state of music today. Some readers will recall that I heard the incredibly, mind-numbingly stupid song that asked “Are we human – or are we dancers?” in a store (please see the article “Songs I Don’t Understand”). I would come up with even more examples had I bothered to remember for more than five minutes the stupid songs I hear in stores.
For a person in a wheelchair, navigating a store is a lot like driving in a city with no traffic laws. Sometimes there is barely enough space to get through, and I always have to make sure I am not in the way of anybody. Then there are grocery stores, where people with carts careen around corners without even thinking about looking; to survive this, you must have excellent peripheral vision and a quick hand on the wheels.
I love watching people talk on their cell phones in stores – or better yet, talk on the hands-free device that looks like a Star Trek gadget attached to their ear. I have progressed past the point where every time I hear these kinds of people, I believe they are talking to me. Yet it’s still entertaining to hear how loud they talk and to think that they apparently don’t care how large a portion of the population knows what they’re having for dinner tonight or what so-and-so said to make them very angry.
Then there are the children. Every once in a while, you will see a cute little kid toddling alongside a shopping cart or sucking his or her thumb while sitting in the kiddie seat of the cart itself (I myself used to like to sit on the lower bed of the cart underneath the main basket; the only explanation of how I did it is that I have always been small). But most of the time the scene is far from cute. In fact, it often makes me wonder if, when Solomon said “Do not spare the rod”, he actually meant that we should take said rod to other people’s children as well as to our own. Whenever I hear the loud, shrill, and disrespectful antics of a small child close by, I brace myself for the strikingly strong possibility that the problem child will be not very far from where I am for the remainder of the shopping trip.
Many grocery stores have come up with a terrific idea – namely, sample bins. Now, I realize that the idea is not so terrific for germophobes who gag at the very thought of another human having touched a surface before them. But for the rest of us, this can be an exciting diversion from an otherwise fairly plain, boring, and routine re-stocking mission. It is especially satisfying when you are hungry to begin with, and some places actually offer good samples – such as gourmet cheese, fine bread, potato chips and salsa, and (best of all) cookies or cake. The drawbacks include not getting to the store before everyone else and finding the sample bin with your name on it empty; and there’s always the chance that you will find a sample not to your liking. For instance, once I reached in and pulled out a dried, salted green bean. It was not very good.
I could say more, but the preceding is sufficient to defend my manliness against all nay-sayers and claimers to the contrary. Look me in the eye and tell me – could the Banana Bliss possibly have been victorious if I, like any other self-respecting man, affirm that while shopping I pay attention to everything but the shopping as I wait for it to be over?
I tell you, no. If the Great Banana had sucked my brain fully out of my head, as my dismissive enemies would have you believe, I would have spent this article in telling you about the great deal they had on flip-flops today at Kohl’s.