shopper’s paradise
Folks sort of pity us South Enders down here at the remote dead end of the island. They think our shopping options are pretty near zip, almost like living in Russia at the end of the Cold War. I admit, Tyee Store’s shelves aren’t Trader Joe’s, stocked to the roof with multiple selections and competitive pricing. But they don’t flood us with advertising and buying gimmicks either.
We’ve all been inundated with ads all our lives. Billboards, TV commercials, junk mail, newspapers, radio stations and now a virtual tsunami on the internet. Hardly a dark hollow you can crawl into you won’t get some shrill ad coming at you one right after the other. No wonder people go into debt — we’re addicted to wanting things. We’re hooked on consuming. New car, new clothes, new hairdo, new electronics, new every damn thing in the world. The whole country runs on it. No wonder Christmas is the national holiday, goes two or three months now. If we stopped buying down at the mall and did what us South Enders do, shop at the Thrift Store, America would go broke in about a week. Hedge fund moguls would have to buy their suits used at Goodwill. We’d drive around less buying junk so oil companies would slow down their drilling and car companies would make bicycles. Food would get grown in gardens, not flown in from Tinbuktu or made in a factory. Families might turn off their gigantic TV’s because nothing would be on after all the sponsors disappeared and maybe parents would eat their meals with their kids again.
People would get to know the neighbors instead of surfing the Web for good deals on replacing appliances that work perfectly okay now. They might even repair stuff that broke instead of tossing it down at the dump. Maybe we’d learn to read again instead of updating our Facebook page, maybe our attention spans would expand and flowers would grow lush in our yards and weather would improve and we’d be happier and paradise would spread across the land and we’d all laugh and play on our very own South Ends.
Right….. Then again, we only got so much South End room left. Sorry. I’m afraid you addicts will just have to make do. Go to the Mall and see what they got on sale. Hey, and good luck to ya. You wouldn’t like it down here anyway. Bad selections for consumers. It’s true, though, you can’t buy happiness. If you don’t believe me, google/shop that. Poor selection, no sale price…..
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