Holiday Shopping

Like most men I shy away from shopping. I’m a buyer not a shopper. When I need something I go to the store, find my item, pay for it, and generally finish the foray in an hour at most. Women, on the other hand, seem to enjoy spending a long day wandering through shops, fondling merchandise, and looking for bargains. Sometimes they don’t even make a purchase. Anthropologists say this all hearkens back to a time eons ago when men were the hunters and women were the gatherers.

 Several holiday season ago I discovered why that division of labor should remain intact. In a moment of weakness I agreed to accompany my wife on her annual foray on black Friday, blue Monday, chartreuse Wednesday or whatever. She rousted me out at that darkest hour just before dawn and hustled me down to the big box store. The place resembled the OU parking lot an hour before game time. A restless crowd was milling around aimlessly waiting for the doors to open. At the appointed hour they opened and the crowd, wild eyed and deranged beyond belief, began their rampage. I saw this little old lady shoved aside and reached over to help her regain her balance only to be struck with her cane and told I couldn’t beat her out of the sale towels.

People were grabbing up x-boxes, i-phones, and q-tips so fast it made you wonder what

they were going to do when they ran out of the alphabet. By the time we got to the stack of 100 twenty-eight inch tvs that were purported to be had for half price it was pure pandemonium. The tv sets were still wrapped in clear plastic and stacked eight feet high on a wooden pallet. The sales person in charge was trying to get the wrap off them when he was unceremoniously shoved aside. As the crowd tore at the restraints the display began to teeter. Just as they managed to rip off the last of the wrapping all of the sets crashed to the floor.

I’m pretty sure a small child was crushed, but my wife, with a maniacal giggle, managed to grab a sale item before they totally disappeared. Unfortunately, another deranged woman also had a grip on the box and in an instant they were engaged in mortal combat. I made a valiant effort to separate them, but some guy, I suppose the other lady’s husband, took it the wrong way and cracked me in the mouth. About that time store security arrived and, to make a long story short, we all wound up at the police station sans tv set.

I have learned my lesson. It is better to let the women engage in mortal hand to hand combat in the market place while we males take out our frustrations and aggressions against biased and unfair football officials via television. After all the ladies will soon provide us a better set with which to carry out our proper role in life. Its all in the genes.