Hal's Rant-O-Matic©...Shopping
I think I can safely say, most men hate to go shopping. Men can go shopping, by themselves, and be back home in a half hour with what they want, even if the store is two hours away. If a woman goes shopping, she is gone for four or five hours, even if the store is only a half hour away, and may actually come home with nothing at all! Why is this? There are many reasons, and I plan on cluing you in so you are able to grasp the complexities of shopping like I have managed to do. This is such a huge undertaking, I don't know where to begin.
A woman can go shopping for nothing. Men don't do that. Men go and buy exactly what they want, and get the hell out as quickly as possible. A woman can wander about, looking at everything, comparing prices, colors, ounces, freshness dates, every inch of fabric on clothing to guard against flawed merchandise, open stuff to make sure it is all there, and then not even make a purchase. The reason why there are no shopping carts availible in the stores is because all the woman need them to carry around those huge purses, filled with everything needed to survive a nuclear catastrophe, not because they are buying anything.
A woman is perfectly happy with just window shopping. She doesn't even have to be in a store to shop! You put a window between a man and a rack full of tools, and you've got trouble for sure. A man has to be able to grab onto what he wants like he already owns it. He has to shake it and wave it around like a prize fish or something. "Hey everyone, look what I got! It's the last one so it must be a good one!" Then he takes it home and uses it right away and says, "Boy, my new tool sure does a great job." Woman buy things and store them away, and may never use them. If a man isn't using something, then it is broken, or in the shop, in which case he makes up a reason why he needs it right away, and simply buys another one,... a better one.
A man does not buy stuff because it is attractive, or a certain color, or a certain model. He buys it because he wants it. No other factor has to be considered. He may say, I need this or that, but what he really means is, I want that there item right now, and I'm going to have it. Wonder what it is? Well, it doesn't matter really, because it is expensive and has a lot of parts, and it must do some really neat things. He will not be lured into buying a one piece vacuum cleaner with no moving parts, (a broom). No, if it doesn't have a list of parts that cover two pages, he's not interested.
I haven't covered a man and a woman shopping together yet. To be polite, I will usually take control of the shopping cart. However, most men will not push them. We pull them instead. We have to have more control than pushing allows, without exerting to much energy. If there is any damaged or otherwise hard to control shopping cart in the hundreds I can choose from in the pile, I somehow find it. One time I was pushing a cart with a bad attitude. It refused to be steered in a straight line. First dodging left, then to the right, and if you let go, it would move all by it's self! I let go of one once, next thing I know, this came over the intercom... "Runaway cart, isle seven! Reckless man in blue Buffalo Bills jacket! Store security, isle seven!" This can easily be taken care of though, by pulling the cart. Not only does it make the cart more easily handled, but you look less subservient pulling a cart, than pushing it.
So I go shopping with the wife, and she asks, "What do you want for dinner?" I replied, "You mean you don't have a list???" I always make a list when I shop, even if I only have one item wrote down. I mean, why take the chance of going into a hardware store to buy a screwdriver, and walking out with a new table saw or generator or something because you forgot the real reason why you went there? I had to explain to my wife one time why I went to the store to get some paper for the computer printer, and came home with a 32 inch Magnovox TV and a DSS satellite system. I told her I didn't have a list and thought that is what I went after.
Shopping can be dangerous too. I was looking for a cake for my wife for her birthday a few days ago. The woman in the bakery department asked if she could help me and I said I just wanted a chocolate cake. She said the one on the front display shelf, the "Sinfully Chocolate" cake was the one I wanted. I grabbed it and headed toward the checkout counter. Soon I realized I was in trouble as a woman blocked my path. "You took the last "Sinfully Chocolate" cake", she said. "Yes," I replied, "So I did." I made a quick move to go around her, but she placed her foot in front of the cart wheel, thus impeding my progress, and I was again trapped. "I must have it." she said. I could tell I had her at my mercy, she had this blank look of desperation in her eyes. I told her I would sell it to her. She gave me ten bucks for the $6.95 cake and walked out the door, promptly being stopped by store security for not paying for the cake. In the ensuing confusion, I picked another chocolate cake for $4.95, and continued on to the magazine rack to get that muscle car magazine I didn't have enough money for when I came in.
To sum all this up, while I have made much fun of the woman shoppers, men can be finicky as well. If you really enjoy shopping, especially this time of year, I think you need to seek professional help. I go shopping a lot with my wife, but the simple fact is, I enjoy spending time alone with her, even if there are hundreds of other strangers milling about. And here are a few last minute shopping tips. If you shop at the local mall, exit from the same door you enter, or you will never find your car. If you put the last of a certain item from the shelf in your cart, cover it up with your coat so other shoppers won't accost you when they see you have the only one of it's kind left in the store. And if you have a shopping cart with a mind of it's own, keep a good hold on it, because there is always some misguided soul out there looking to get run over by a shopping cart so they can sue you.
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