Column
She'll Shop
Till I Drop
DAVE BARRY
I
can't shop with my wife. The problem is that she almost never
has a clear objective. I ALWAYS have a clear objective. Without
a clear objective, you're just wandering randomly around a
store, which is NOT the point of shopping.
This
is not just my opinion: This is the opinion of literally thousands
of Nobel-Prize-winning scientists whose names are available
upon request. These scientists have traced the origins of
shopping back to prehistoric times, when ''shopping'' was
called ''hunting,'' and primitive man would make out his ''shopping
list'' by drawing, on his cave wall, a picture of his objective,
usually a large wad of meat in the form of, say, a yak. He
would then go out into the wild, locate his objective, and
make the ''purchase'' by whomping the yak on the head with
a club.
This
primitive shopper did not dilly-dally. He did not ask whether
the yak was on sale. He did not try to accessorize the yak.
He did not summon his primitive men friends and ask them if
they thought the yak made his hips look big. No, he just WHOMPED
THE YAK, and then he dragged it home, stopping only to whomp
the primitive sales guys who appeared out of nowhere and tried
to force him to purchase the service agreement.
This
is the biological basis for shopping. And this is why, even
today, most men, when they shop, are yak-whompers. They do
not wander: They go straight for the kill. I know I do. When
I enter a store, I have a definite, practical, no-nonsense
objective in mind, which is to locate, and secure, an electronic
gizmo that I already have, except the new one has more features.
For
example, recently, in a surgical shopping strike so blindingly
fast you would need slow-motion replay to even see it, I located
and secured a new cellphone that, in addition to being a phone,
receives e-mail AND takes extremely low-quality photographs.
It has changed my life. Now, when I'm not using my phone's
cellphone feature (''Hello? Hello? Hello?'') I can use the
camera feature to record precious moments that I can share
with others. (''Here's a picture of my daughter's ballet recital.
Or, the Grand Canyon.'') And thanks to my phone's e-mail feature,
even when I'm away from my computer, I can receive the literally
hundreds of urgent messages I receive every day from people
wishing to enhance my manhood.
My
wife did not understand why I needed this phone. Yet every
guy I show it to immediately agrees that it is a vital necessity.
I have a friend named Robert who has a similar phone, and
recently we discovered that, theoretically, I could ''beam''
my address and phone number from my phone to his phone THROUGH
THE AIR. I say ''theoretically'' because we could not get
it to actually work, although we spent a good 10 minutes standing
about a foot apart, pointing our phones at each other and
fruitlessly pressing buttons. Several women watched this with
some amusement; they suggested that -- get this -- it might
be quicker for me to just TELL Robert my address and phone
number, which would have represented a wanton and reckless
disregard on our part for the beaming feature. These women
also suggested that we look at our owner's manuals, which
of course is out of the question. For a guy, reading the manual
is tantamount to admitting that, manhoodwise, you are in the
hamster category.
But
my point is that I acquired this phone via the standard guy
method: in a bold, decisive, lightning-quick stroke. You're
in; you're out; you're done! (I'm talking about shopping here.)
Whereas my wife, when she gets inside a store, routinely takes
astoundingly long periods of time to accomplish, essentially,
nothing. She just shops! With no objective! She can spend
what feels like days just looking at -- without actually purchasing
-- stationery. She's always in the market for stationery because
she's always writing notes to her women friends, who are always
writing notes back to her thanking her for her note, which
causes HER to write back to THEM, and so on.
So
I can't go shopping with her. It makes me crazy. If I needed
stationery, bang, I would grab some stationery and get the
hell out of there. Of course I don't need stationery, because,
as a guy, I never write notes. If I ever had a message for
one of my friends, I would just beam it to him. Or I will,
once I have mastered that feature.
Source: www.davebarry.com
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(R) thedailystar.net 2004
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