Shopping and Spending

I do not enjoy shopping. I never have. I likely never will. It’s just not my thing. Yesterday, I had to stop at the neighborhood hardware store on the way home. Even before I got into the correct turning lane to visit the store I knew my mission. I only needed two items, grass seed and wasp killer spray. Even before I parked the car I visualized the two aisles in the store where these two items are located. This would be a three-to-five minute trip I thought.

Immediately I go to the grass seed aisle. I look over the choices and within two minutes determine what I need. One down, one to go. Now on to the dangerous sprays and chemicals aisle. And standing there is my worst shopping nightmare…a couple engrossed in reading seemingly every ingredient on every can on every shelf on this very aisle.

I suppose I’m too much of a nice guy to butt in and go eyeballing this aisle to find what I need. I mean I hate it when I’m treated that way. So, I walk back to the grass seed aisle and take another couple of minutes making sure the grass seed I have in my hands is what I think I need. Surely by now I think, I can get on the bug-killing spray aisle. Yet, when I return to that aisle, there the couple is, still engrossed in label-reading.

Okay, I tell myself. Give them another minute or two. So, I then begin wandering the aisles. Light bulbs, pet care, lawnmowers, shower accessories, plumbing supplies, air conditioner filters, ladders, closet organizers. Now nearly ten minutes later, I find myself exiting an aisle and almost running into the couple who had kept me roadblocked from the bug spray aisle earlier.

I then begin to make my move toward the aisle I had so long wanted to visit. As I make my way there though, I see someone else approaching. Looking at him I try to gauge where he is going. As I look for his eyes I ask myself will looking there clue me in on where he is headed? Yet I already know where he intends to go. And although I arrive at the bug spray aisle two steps before him he steps onto that very same aisle with me just as I knew deep down inside me he would.

So there we are both looking for some sort of spray or poison and I notice that what I am looking for is directly in front of where this gentleman is standing. Of course, it would be. After all, this was only going to be a five minute excursion and now I have tripled that.

So, I apologize and step back down the aisle in front of my fellow aisle-sharer. I locate the spray I need and venture toward the checkout. There, one cashier totals sales for the five or six of us in line.

Three to five minutes has turned into twenty minutes by the time I leave. I suppose this is why shopping and I don’t always see eye-to-eye. I knew what I needed, knew where it was located and still couldn’t work my plan in spite of planning my work.

As I drive away toward home I toss over in my mind how much money I just spent. I try in some way to balance the checkbook in my head. As I do that my mind briefly drifts off track and I wonder about the other thing I just spent that I can’t now get back. Time. Too bad, I can’t go shopping for time, although if I could I probably wouldn’t have the patience nor take the time to do so.