Showing restraint?
by Matt Worley

Have you gone holiday shopping yet?

I haven't. And I know exactly what I'm going to buy. I just haven't gotten it in my head to actually go shopping. There are a couple of reasons--waiting for the paycheck is one--but mostly I know I'm going to be in the middle of a bunch of people hurrying around to get hardly anything done. That and I haven't drawn for the office "holiday" pool yet.

There is one guy where I work who hates to shop. He likes to say he hates people, but that's not really true. He just hates people he doesn't know. Which is a whole lot of them. But the hatred is passing and not really the kind of hatred that makes people get out an uzi and start tearing up the place. At least I hope not.

But every month my friend at work starts talking about how he's going to have to go shopping--sometime. Is it going to be today? Or tomorrow? Or will he actually get someone to go shopping for him? This is a tactic he uses much of the time.

"Will you go shopping for me?" he asks.

"No, man," I say.

He asks someone else.

"How much will you pay me?" they ask.

This he takes as a no, because he can't really pay anyone enough money to go shopping for him. Possibly this is just one of those strange conversation starters people learn--kinda like "Did you see the X-Files last night?"

As if anyone talks about the X-Files at work anymore.

But shopping, it's the eternal task. No matter how much we go shopping, we know we're gonna have to go out (sometime soon--even if it's a few weeks or a month away) and go shopping again.

Christmas (or "holiday") shopping is different. The theory being that I only have to go out and shop once. And if everything is planned perfectly--it never is, but I can hope--no more will I have to brave the crowds this year. But this is not the popular approach, apparently.

The Friday after Thanksgiving is touted as the busiest shopping day of the year (even though last year it was 7th busiest). Everyone says this. Everyone knows this. And yet, at 7 a.m. on Friday, tons and tons of people lined up outside of every big building built for shopping waiting for the doors to open.

I woke up at 7 a.m. on Friday for a few minutes because what sounded like an air raid siren was going off. I think it meant the neighborhood Wal-Mart was open for business.

The reason a lot of us (my mom calls us "curmudgeons") don't like to go out shopping with everyone else is simple: people are selfish. The most dedicated shoppers are not concerned with anyone else's well-being or that anyone else exists as long as their mission is accomplished. This means lots of bitching, grabbing, tossing, running, blocking, sacking and slapping down of the credit cards.

Not like any of this can be avoided. No matter how much shopping we do during the year (food, birthday, anniversary, mother's and father's day, personal gratification) everyone in this part of the world shops for holiday gifts. Every religion has figured out a holiday for this season (most of which were created to pass the time between the beginning of winter until spring comes), so everyone needs that special something for that special someone.

Even if it's a furby or a computer or a compact disk or something even less personable.

If you haven't started your shopping engines by now, you'll never win the race. And, as everyone knows, there's never been a better time to buy.

Matt Worley is going shopping on Thursday, but he's not going to smile about it.

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