I Hate Shopping

Here, where I live, in New York State, we had our first accumulating snow of the season. To narrow the geography down a little bit, I live in the western portion of New York State. For those who are unaware, there is a lot of real estate in New York that doesn’t include New York City.

When the snow started to fall, around 7:00 in the evening, I happened to be driving for work. My co-worker and I began to sing Holiday songs. His humor being as warped as mine, we created our own lyrics that were slightly amusing, at least to us. Lyrics like, “Oh the weather outside is....weather.”

Since Halloween, the Christmas shopping advertisements have started on television, and the snow only added to the impending sense of Christmas. The church I attend has, for the past few years, invited the congregation to participate in Advent Conspiracy. I encourage you to check out the website AdventConspiracy.org and read about it for yourself. I especially like the idea of spending less; doing less shopping. I hate shopping.

Let me clarify that it is not the act of shopping that bothers me the most. I shop, but when I shop, I like to get all Walter Mitty and imagine I am on a CIA rendition. I swoop in fast and low, grab the target, pay off an official on the way out, and escape before being spotted by the enemy.

The things that bother me the most in executing my mission are an unspecified target, civilians milling around impeding my progress, and long lines at the border check points.

I am quite thankful that Beloved understands these things and that is why we start our Christmas shopping in October and are usually done by Thanksgiving. We take a couple of weekdays and get out to the mall as the doors open. We shop until the crowds start to swell; and by swell, I mean more than 10 other people in the store.

I am always amazed at how people can safely drive to the mall; they follow all the rules of the road, keeping to the right, neither speeding, nor impeding traffic, and entering  traffic safely. Then they arrive at the mall and immediately upon walking through the doors, lose all common sense. They walk against the flow of traffic; they enter the flow of traffic without looking both ways, and stop without warning in the middle of the lane of traffic.

This addlepated perambulating is infuriating.  

That is why I hate shopping so much, and so, Beloved has a detailed plan when we shop. She knows which stores we are going to attack,which packages we need to extract, and what is a reasonable amount to be paid to each border guard. Every step is planned out. Our Christmas shopping rendition complete, it is now time for my favorite part of the holiday season, eating cookies.