We went Christmas shopping today. You know, the passe tradition of leaving one’s house, mixing with fellow citizens, and purchasing presents for the holiday season.
The combination of COVID overkill and digital ease – how much less effort is required to click a mouse button to make a purchase – have wounded but not outright killed the traditional way of shopping.
I’m here to tell you there are benefits to the old way.
Begin with running into acquaintances and catching up, as the wife did on one stop.
Add in the ability to touch and feel the merchandise – impossible digitally.
Plus, and this is a big one, you just might run into a surprisingly good deal.
The wife and I did exactly that on several occasions.
At Walmart, the clearance section had one desirable toy, an LOL playhouse, but it was not marked with a price. Then came Newton, a friendly worker sort who was only too glad to price check it for us. When that number came back about 50 percent lower than the same item elsewhere, it quickly found its way into the shopping cart.
Let me interject at this point that the plastic snow sliders that used to be almost everywhere, have been hard to find of late. Or, when you do happen on them, they are ridiculously overpriced as if they were formed of precious metals, not a hydrocarbon product.
Perhaps kids don’t want to risk going outside and chilling their extremities by sled riding, so they sit in front of a computer monitor, playing a sled-riding game.
Yeah, that’s progress.
Because we have granddaughters ages 5 and nearly 4, and because they have been hooked by Disney vehicles including the Frozen franchise, the wife and I were cheered to find Frozen saucer sleds on the discount rack.
Again, no price. Again, enter Newton, to proclaim a good deal. And Newton made sure I got his name so I might be able to reference his pricing act should the cashier not ring up the correct amount.
This is another bonus of shopping in-person, meeting cheerful and helpful people.
On yet another stop, there was a 15-percent across-the-board discount promised on toys, which made for some more compelling purchases. Also, while roaming around this facility I came across some interesting merchandise.
It appealed to me and just might appeal to the kids. It was a microscope and telescope packaged together, again for a seemingly ridiculously low price and under the label of National Geographic.
As a kid who grew up consuming the soft porn offered in school libraries by National Geographic magazine and its pictures of topless native women around the world, I respect the National Geographic brand.
But I wanted to contemplate this, so we went to dinner, eating free on a gift card from the son and his family honoring a recent anniversary.
NOTE: You don’t ease into a restaurant between shopping stops when you’re sitting at home mouse manipulating.
While we ate, the wife did some quick cell phone searching on the telescope-microscope offering. And, as I had thought, this discount store was just about giving it away.
We finished eating, stopped again at that store, and purchased this educational toy the kids might find appealing.
Yes, I’ve done some Christmas shopping earlier on the Internet. I’m neither a technophobe, nor a Luddite.
But I do like to keep traditions alive, and we did that today.
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