Black Friday Shopping? Not This Guy!

I have just heard that technology has gone a long way to making me whole again. A tiny chip about the size of a grain of sand may, if all goes as expected, solve my aversion to shopping.

Today is THE shopping day of the year and I will spend it on a long dusty run through dry woods with only the rhythm of my breathing to disturb the silence. Why anyone would prefer to compete with crowds for the annual output of China is incomprehensible.

Do not get me wrong, I am no misanthropist who prefers the company of trees to stealing the last parking spot from a desperate granny at the communal mall. Neither am I that selfish soul who only brings an appetite to Christmas. What I am is a person who loathes shopping.

I can understand buying things, but I cannot understand shopping for things.

My wife has this skill that I am devoid of. She spends all of summer scouring the scented boutiques of Red Wing, Hastings and Nisswa to match this little colored object with that personality. Watching her shop is like the color blind following an interior decorator. I will trail in her wake only so far as the threshold before complaining that the heavy fragrance of candles is bothering my allergies or the soothing Nature Age music is nodding me off. At the core of it, I simply cannot comprehend why anyone would be thinking of Christmas in July.

While she enjoys the doing of it: the perusing of shelves, the tactile sensation of goods, the symphony of colors, the scent of new things, I prefer reading fiction in the sunlight or contemplating the cool reality of a beer whispering from the darkness of a pub. As for buying gifts, my idea of Christmas shopping is sliding under the clattering grate of a closing store at 6 pm on Christmas Eve, while shouting, “Gimme, six of those!!”

This brings me back to technology.

Coming soon to every object near you is a tiny radio transmitter about the size of a grain of sand. This technology is called Radio Frequency Identification (RFID). With this implant, everything in the store constantly, and imperceptibly broadcasts, “This is what I am. This is where I am”. Armed with this technology, I can roar up to the entrance of a Wal-Mart, dive out of my vehicle (leaving the doors open and engine running) then honing in with my Gooseberry Shopping Positioning System locate each object on a generic list downloaded from a Handicapped Shoppers Website then after plucking it into a cart, dive out the door before my car is stolen. Everything I scoop up will be detected and charged to my account as I sail through the door.

You may ask, why don’t I just order over the internet? To which I reply, “Do you think me so cold that I would not gift shop for my wife, siblings, and grandkids!!”