This morning I went to the store for one thing and one thing only– a Christmas tree. Since Maya has wicked allergies, I was looking for an artificial one. I picked one out online and went to pick it up. This will be quick! I thought. In and out! Only one item!
Isn’t my naivete adorable?
So I was in the store, had spotted my intended purchase, and went back to the front to get a cart for the massive box. Sometime between wheeling the cart out of the cart stable, and getting back to the artificial tree aisle, I must have… gotten lost, or SUCKED INTO A BLACK HOLE OF CONSUMERISM, because I don’t remember anything between grabbing my empty cart, and waking up in the rear lot of the store on a pile of 39-cent holiday candles, bruised, my wallet empty, with “HAHA SUCKER! LOVE, TARGET” carved into my stomach.
Okay, that part is not true, but close. By the time I had found my way back to the artificial tree aisle, my cart was full of shit, just absolute crap. If a warehouse full of plastic washed down chorizo and eggs with Jäger bombs, got diarrhea and could only find my cart in which to relieve itself, it would look like this. I WILL BUY ALL OF THE THINGS. I snapped out of it, thankfully. All of a sudden I looked down at some 97-cent plastic snowman-shaped cup for the kids that had appeared in my cart, realized it was just shit– shit that would pile up in my kitchen, living room, dining room and drive me crazy and and and WHY? No. I emptied everything straight into the middle of the aisle (save the tree), and ran away.
I’m not writing some bitter diatribe on advertising and consumerism; someone else can do that much better than I. I am just amazed, more than anything, at how easy it is to get sucked in. I love Christmas (there! I said it! it is my mom’s fault!) and want to make it fun for my kids and start traditions for our newly-meshed fambly, but something tells me that the 97-cent plastic snowman cup isn’t an integral part of that.
I can’t be the only one– Do you ever get sucked into the BUY ALL THE THINGS holiday spirit?
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