Lost in consumer hell

By Jeffrey R. DeRego
HippoPress.com

People who shop early for Christmas gifts annoy me. My mother-in-law, for example, finished her Christmas shopping in August. August! I am still debating whether to swim in the condo complex pool or stay in my air-conditioned apartment. I can't think about December gift giving!

Every November as billions of frustrated shoppers descend on the Mall of New Hampshire I remind myself that this whole shopping thing could have been done months ago. This increases my annoyance considerably.

Adding to the torture of Christmas shopping is a condition I call seasonal Alzheimers. This condition renders me unable to remember any of the items on my Christmas shopping list. Seasonal Alzheimers also prevented me from remembering to bring the aforementioned list with me to the mall.

Therefore, instead a neat and efficient stop, pay, and wrap; I shamble through "The Great American Music Box Company" and seriously consider illustrating the depth of my love for the wife through the gift of a porcelain squirrel with a clock in its belly.

This is never a good situation.

The general atmosphere of the mall does not make things easier. At any given moment I may be run down by one of the eight billion strollers that prowl the corridors like Roman chariots. Why not just attach some pikes or some spinning blades? At least that way I can feel like I am in the Coliseum.

I am Maximus!

Good God there are a whole lot of these things in the mall nowadays. It's almost a preschool production of Ben Hur! Apparently New Hampshire's population explosion occurred within the last year.

All these kids must be the result of bottled up anxiety from last years Y2K nonevent.

Most of these new parents stake out the Kay-Bee Toy Store like teenagers waiting for Eminem tickets. Have you ever ventured into Kay-Bee after Thanksgiving? Its like blundering into a WWF steel cage match! A seething blob of flesh and down jackets clamoring for the most advertised, most expensive fad-toy just to make this Christmas perfect!

No wonder the kids look shell-shocked until New Years.

"I had to kill twenty people to get that PlayStation 2! Now you go play, and keep it quiet. Mommy and Daddy want to watch TV."

So there I am, suffering from short term memory loss, wandering from one store that I never shop at to another store I never shop at looking for things whose form I cannot remember.

Then I deal with the clerks.

Now I know as well as anyone that retail is a hard business, but clerks of the world I am not your enemy.

I think a good indicator to measure the strength of the economy is the amount of hostility shown by the average retail store clerk. See, since the economy is good none of them will ever be fired. Finding good help is hard, nearly impossible, so letting staff go is as likely as a five-cent sale at a jewelry store. They command their two hundred square foot domain like medieval tyrants.

I am the king of Sunglasses Hut! Bow to my magnificence!

I think some of these stores exist specifically to make shopping more difficult.

How many apricot and sardine scented candles can one person ever need? When was the last time you said, "Gee I really need another kitchen doodad... Oh, look a kitchen doodad store!" Ninetynine percent of the year the kitchen doodad store is empty. Six weeks before Christmas and you would think that instead of doodads they were handing out gold bullion.

There are people everywhere. Parking in handicapped spots, on sidewalks, on the grass between handicapped spots and the sidewalk.

I half expect to see a monster truck, or two, parked in the food court.

Seasonal Alzheimers is worsened by increased choices. Stores and carts that sell everything from home alarm systems to toy helicopters that break as soon as they are taken from the plastic packaging to Scandinavian sandals and the ever present smoked sausage that junkyard dogs have been known to avoid.

All of it, even the sausage, is considered before the onset of traumatic stress disorder. The chariots! The screaming! Maniacal laughter from the kingdom of Yankee Candle! PlayStation 2! Pokemon!

I think of my mother-in-law, sitting in her kitchen, this year's gifts wrapped and piled in a closet since August. I curse her smugness, her prior planning, and her common sense, and continue on, through the holiday madness.

I still have no idea what to buy, and time is running short. Luckily, I have four more weeks.

I hear the words in my head like a chorus of phantoms. "Four more weeks Jeff. You've only got four more weeks. Maybe you should've bought that porcelain squirrel."

Next time I'll remember the list.

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