From the Archives — On Shopping

I went out for dinner with my wife last night. On the way home, we did some shopping.

I hate shopping. I don’t mind buying. There’s a difference.

I don’t go into a store unless I know what I want. I get it, I pay for it, I leave. That’s buying.

Shopping is that strange behavior where you wander around stores aimlessly with no destination in mind. Take this diagram for instance.

You’ll notice that the female path missed two stores on the left side of the mall. Those are no doubt a bookstore and a corn dog stand, the only two stores in the mall worth visiting.

If I’m forced to shop, I get sick. This actually happens. After a few minutes of shopping, I get restless. I can’t stand still. I begin to feel an urge to scream. If I don’t leave the store immediately, I get headaches and start feeling weak and sick to my stomach. You’ll probably respond that my symptoms are all psychosomatic. That’s probably true, but they’re no less unpleasant for being so.

Anyway, our first stop was at a home supply store for lawn fertilizer, a mail box (our current one doesn’t actually close, so we often get wet mail) and some perennials for our garden. No problem. We found the items we needed and headed for the check-out to buy them when we passed a display of rugs. My wife stopped. I stopped. My wife began looking at the rugs. (I should say here that we are not currently in the market for rugs. Sometime this fall or winter, we may think about buying a rug, but not now.) So we were no longer buying. We were now shopping. I started pacing. I could feel the headache coming on. I warned my wife.

STRANGE FEMALE SHOPPING BEHAVIOR NUMBER 1 — Looking at items they have no intention of purchasing.

Fortunately, after many years of marriage, my wife has learned to recognize the symptoms of shopping disease. She glanced briefly at a few more rugs and then we left. But it was too late. I had a headache.

We stopped at a grocery store for a few food items. I actually tried to help here, but there are only a handful of things I’m allowed to purchase. Apparently there are complicated rituals of price-checking and ingredient-comparing that are beyond my ability.

We were heading for the check-out when I noticed a display of lawn chairs on top of a cooler. I’d seen these chairs the last time I was at the store (about six weeks ago) and told my wife that we should buy two when the weather got warmer. So last night I flagged down a woman who was restocking shelves and asked her if I could pull down one of the chairs and try it out to see if it was comfortable. She said no, but that she could find somebody who could pull one down for me. OK. We waited a few minutes until she returned with a friendly coworker who promptly pulled the chair down and collapsed it on his finger in the process. He unfolded it in the frozen-food aisle, and I sat down for a test sit. It was as comfortable as it looked, and even rocked back into a reclining position. For $19.99, it was a keeper. I turned to ask my wife if she’d like to try it out. With just a glance, I could read her face. Her look said, “This is so embarrassing. There’s no way I’m sitting in a lawn chair in the frozen food aisle of a grocery store and I can’t believe I’m married to a man who is doing it.” (She did try out the chair when we got it home and thought it was just fine.)

STRANGE FEMALE SHOPPING BEHAVIOR NUMBER 2 — Refusing to try out items you are purchasing for fear that somebody might see you.

The guy pulled down a second chair and we went to check-out. As soon as the girl registered the chairs, I took them out to the car. I was standing by the car waiting for my wife to arrive with the groceries. I began wondering where she was when I noticed her pushing the cart, not from the area of the door, but from the far side of the lot.

STRANGE FEMALE SHOPPING BEHAVIOR NUMBER 3 — Leaving a store and heading to where you usually park instead of to where you’ve actually parked.

I suppose, in the interest of fairness, that I should mention one more thing that happened. On the way out of the grocery store parking lot, I almost broke my wrist when I tried to retrieve my sunglasses from the dashboard by reaching through the steering wheel while turning a corner.