Retail Rush

I went shopping yesterday.

There was a time when I enjoyed shopping. Back in the days when I believed perfecting my body was the same thing as perfecting myself, whole weekends were devoted to the acquisition of clothes, shoes, jewelry and cosmetics. Gourmet foods and high end wines, available only from specialty stores, once dominated my shopping lists. I will not embarrass myself by telling you how many years I spent wandering through malls buying things like scented candles and throw pillows. What was the point of having disposable income if I didn’t dispose of it - right?  

Over the years, my mind became more important than my body and my taste buds finally figured out they couldn’t tell the difference between cheap red plonk and fifteen year old Baron Philippe. The ‘hit’ of retail therapy got buried under progressively thick layers of consumer guilt as the hole in the ozone layer expanded and the plastic stew in the middle of the Pacific Ocean spread. Shopping gradually lost its appeal and received its death blow in 2008, when the recession decimated my foolishly-invested life savings. Nowadays, the wilting lily of my body is gilded by semiannual trips to the local charity shop and groceries are handled in a once-a-month binge through the superstore, supplemented by random forays into a local grocery for perishables like apples, milk and butter tarts.

Yesterday’s shopping was a milk and butter tart run. Normally, I’d just dash out to the little shop down the road and scurry home to continue writing. Yesterday, in the grip of a short but intense bout of writer’s block, I decided to take a break from the keyboard and rode the bus out to the new grocery store at the mall. This was a big mistake. With less than two months to Christmas, the mall had been transformed. Styrofoam snow-people and plastic reindeer hobnobbed in store windows. Garish booths took up nearly half the floor space of the mall to ensure I wouldn’t get caught short without a commemorative tree decoration or a Hickory Farms gift basket on C-day.

At first I resisted, stomping stoically past all temptation toward the grocery store, squinting against the glare of twinkly lights on tinsel, breathing shallowly to reduce the aroma of cinnamon-apple potpourri. As I passed the calendar booth, I caught a glimpse of the 2011 Chippendale’s calendar. I slowed my pace, just a fraction, and turned my head to get a better look.

Instantly, a woman whose jauntily tipped Santa hat and rigid smile did nothing to alleviate the boredom in her eyes, leapt out in front of me from behind the booth. “Calendars make wonderful gifts,” she chirped, “and we have a super selection this year!”

I shifted my focus away from the politically incorrect display of rippling abs toward some less embarrassing kittens and took a sideways step, with the intention of walking around her. “I’m just looking, thanks.”

 “Well, be sure to look at the page-a-days.”  She pointed to the next rack over.

When someone points at something, it’s almost impossible not to look. I looked, and there, squeezed between the Harley Lover’s page-a-day and the Sudoku Addict’s page-a-day, sat my nemesis - the Little Zen Calendar. In a former life I must have been a Zen Buddhist monk because I just can’t resist a good koan. My hand stretched out toward the calendar. Just before my fingers touched the pristine plastic wrapping, I jerked my arm back. “Maybe later,” I mumbled and stumbled past the saleswoman.

A similar scene played out in front of a shoe store, where a display of thigh boots activated the vestigial remains of an ancient shoe-fetish. Before I arrived at the grocery store, I’d come perilously close to becoming the proud owner of a spiffy new Blackberry phone, a coffee table book on the ruins at Petra, a pot of miracle face cream guaranteed to eradicate wrinkles, and a two gallon pail of caramel corn. All this self-denial took its toll. I meandered through the grocery store in a haze and nursed an ache of unrequited longing on the bus trip home. Once back inside my house, safe from the retail demon, I made myself a cup of tea and unpacked my shopping bag to get the milk. But there was no milk. No butter tarts either.

What I’d actually bought, for twenty-seven dollars and fifty-three cents, was: two pounds of fruitcake decorated with marzipan holly leaves, a bag of beetroot and sweet-potato chips, and, presumably still under the influence of the Chippendale’s calendar, an obscenely shaped salami festively wrapped in red and green ribbons.

I should have bought the damn Zen calendar.