Christmas Shopping

Here it is, a week before Christmas and due to all the unusual illnesses we have had at our home as well as the very cold weather, I am heading out to Christmas shop, on what the radio tells me is actually the busiest shopping day of the year. I always thought that was the day after Thanksgiving but I guess not. I really do not like to shop so the idea of shopping on the busiest shopping day of the year is enough to get me to take an asprin.

My problems begin with the fact that I have very expensive tastes that I can not afford. Stand me in front of a row of any item and I am guaranteed to pick out the most expensive one. This is balanced only by the fact that I am extremely frugal. These two things in combination do not make shopping fun. Everything is to expensice and I am to cheap. Secondly, I do not like to drive. People are insane when put behind the wheel of motorized vehicles. It is like the frame of the car insulates them from the rest of the world actually causing them to believe that they are the only one in the world and that they are more important than anyone else. It causes what I assume are otherwise well behaved people to behave irrationally. My biggest pet peeve about shopping is that people are rude. No one says excuse me when they cut you off, the sales clerks insist on calling me by my first name, and really what causes a thirty year old woman to budge in line? Did we not outgrow this in kindergarten? Is any material item worth acting like a boor? I don't care how on sale something is, I can not be convinced that it worth loosing my dignity over it just to have it in my posession.

My sister and I have considered printing up stickers that say "You are Rude" so that when we come across these people we can sticker them. The only thing stopping me from doing is that my calling attention to their rude behavior may make me ruder than them.

Emerson said that "Life is not so short that there is always time for courtesy and chivalry." I wish our society would remember this. Meanwhile, wish me luck.