"What makes some of us tightwads and others spendthrifts?â€
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I still don't know, but American RadioWorks explored the question in a documentary titled Design of desire. It is worth a listen.
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In this house, I am the tightwad, my wife is the spendthrift. Every couple of years, she informs me that she can see underwear through the hole in my jeans. I ignore her of course, but she persists -- backing me into a corner, forcing me to venture ever closer to that hell-hole of American culture, the shopping mall.
I refuse to go there. I have no problem flashing a patch of undies. It may be inappropriate in the workplace, but it is not illegal, and when the choice is between shopping and social acceptability, I toe the line of legality.
She keeps insisting, turning up the heat, and I respond by intensifying my denial, procrastination and outright fibbing. If I am lucky, this process will take several seasons.
She has grown used to my ways and shows remarkable restraint when I haul out my tried and true lines like, “Honest Honey, I went to Sears but the store was sold out of jeansâ€. She knows what I am up to. She has lived with me long enough to know I am stalling for the holidays, hoping Christmas will bring a new pair of jeans.
The truth is I hate shopping. I do not like to spend. I do not like new things. I am an arch-conservative who believes that human kind took its first wrong turn when it invented barter, This primitive form of shopping is virulent enough, but then society went on to invent haggling, clerks, credit-cards and shopping malls. All of these things are designed to impoverish and humiliate men so that women can seize the family financiers and eventually the entire economy.
Statistics support this dark view, in 80% of American households, the wife controls the check-book. She does so because she can shop, and her hapless husband cannot.
My wife, on the other hand, is who Thorstein Veblen had in mind when he wrote The Theory of the Leisure Class. She has little home life; stopping here only to sleep off her mall binges. For her work exists solely to finance her addictions.
I love the girl, I tried to get her into therapy, but then she went shopping for a therapist........
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Comments: 25
Drat!! I hate when that happens.
As for me, malls give me a rash. It's the "hunter" thing. The idea in the jungle is to enter, shoot dinner and leave without getting hurt. This is an almost impossible task in a mall.
That argument never works vs. a woman on a mission.
- Dave, no one shops for computers, we just procure something way short of what we really require. Procuring is NOT shopping.
- John O, you have, you were just to polite to post it.
- John Porter. When being dragged by a wife, do what the kids do, go limp and drop to the floor screaming. When I do this, other women look at my wife with scorn. It's so cool!!!
Where you stranded in a mall? Sometimes it takes years to find your way out. I have lost three brothers to the Mall of America.
Penny, my idea of Christmas shopping is rushing into the mall at precisely 5:30PM on December 24th and skidding beneath the closing gates. I have developed techniques to employ on recalcitrant staff who try to shove me back out into the hallway.......see the comments upthread about adult temper-tantrums.
Richard, Have you noted the trend of young people buying name-brand jeans with holes pre-worn? Can we hope this trend continues and intensifies -- it definitly is moving in our favor.
Julie - You point to an interesting phenomena -- the situational ethics of buying. To me, this is just back-sliding. And as for vintage bicycles and Craftmans tools THESE ARE NECESSITIES!!! - as vital as the air we breath and the water we drink.
Yes, yes, Greg, I've heard - and even used - the "These are necessities!" line before. Whatever the item happens to be, there's always some future cost associated to it...storage, etc. And then that cost is "maintaining the investment."
;-)