2000-03-17 - 02-12-00

Heather and I went shopping today (March 16) or to put it more accurately, I accompanied her on her shopping trip. It is hard for me to handle this shuffle, stop, shuffle shuffle stop, shufflestopshufflestop. I do my best to be agreeable, courteous and patient with her. After while if there is a snack bar or whatever kind of place I can sit down and maybe read I ask her if I can be excused and go there. She is in her element then, she can do her shoe shuffle stop all over the store, looking up a storm, now and then putting something in her basket to buy. When she has checked out, she takes the stuff to the car and comes back in to the snack bar and has a cup of coffee while I do a repeat on the java.

I guess that despising shopping comes from my early pre school and primary school days. Mama couldn't afford a baby sitter, baby sitter ? Whatever they called them then. I don't really know the term used then, but I do know that child care could be had back then, for a price. So I would ride the street car down town and go shopping with her. SOP with mom was to start at one end of the shopping district and go store by store, mom doing comparison pricing on all the stuff she was looking for. Then, hanging onto her hand I would drag back with her to the stores which had the best prices and she would do her purchasing. Then the seemingly long,long trail (maybe a block) would be traversed to a sometimes long wait at the curb for the street car. I would drowse on the way home and be torpid and cranky on the short walk home. Poor little boy, yeah right. Most of the year was good compared to the Christmas season, then the street car was crowded going in to town, the sidewalks almost impassable and we would squirt through the department store's door into a tangled mass of humanity all of whom had their eyes pointed in other directions than they were moving. Mom tried to make it easy for me as she could, but the times we were at the counter while Mom examined the goods, and made her purchase I would be kneed, elbowed, stepped on and shoved out of the way. I dreaded the elevators, they would be uncomfortably crowded and I would get all that jazz in one big dose, rather than getting a succession of affronts to my dignity.

I didn't like it then and I still don't like it. Christmas shoppers are heedless, cruel and selfish people to those around them.

That was then, now, I really don't know, I have been Christmas shopping maybe twice in the last forty years. I don't even like to shop for anything I desire greatly. My usual procedure is to to telephone, find out the availability and price on the merchandise I want. Already knowing the places I can get the best prices, on finding that they have what I want, I go get it, pay for it go to the car and go home. That is the way it goes if I can't finagle Heather into getting it for me while she is out.

So, early childhood shopping experiences soured me on the whole thing.

In my teen years I worked in the shopping district at Christmas seasons. Walking from the streetcar to the store was messy to say the least, in the store it was almost impossible to get to my work area. Busy at a frantic pace, lunch break was usually short and I would make a dash outside and eat my sandwich on the street trying to get in a position where ubiquitous outdoor loudspeakers weren't blaring conflicting carols over and over again. At days end was the struggle to get to the curb to catch a streetcar home and usually standing in the aisle holding on the the handholds on the corner of the seats. I don't think Denver had the big town straps to hang on to. I would be poked somewhere with packages and invariably where ever I stood, I would be in the way of someone wanting to get off or move further back in the car. Remarkably through the years I did get to the point that good christmas carols were enjoyable listening for me.

later on war time was upon us and things got even more crowded and frantic all the time. Downtown in the stores people were trying to find things which were unavailable anywhere. People had to use ration coupons to get things like shoes. It was bad here but by comparison Europe and the South Pacific were sheer hell. Some of my returning friends upon consumption of enough alcohol would talk some about how it was over there, some of my not yet twenty year old friends in service were then old men. And of course many did not return. I would feel so guilty, working on the railroad while they were in the combat areas, but I was 4F and deferred anyway because of my working at the railroad.

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