No online holiday shopping for me, thanks

To be fair, I've noticed that people find a lot of interpretations of their life built into this upcoming holiday season.

I don't know whether it is a time for reflection or just pausing to look around and decide what might be on sale. I do know now, though, that the true meaning of the holidays is combat-ready shopping. Not only does this mean shopping early, but it also means online.

For a lot of us, online shopping will be uncharted waters. We will have to learn to fill up that shopping cart icon without deleting the computer screen, let alone knocking out the power grid for the entire ZIP code.

It sounds simple, but just try to translate to the computer that you want to check out without buying the 3,000 scarves that appeared at the bottom of your inventory list by mistake.

You see, normally I'm not a person who shops online. But, occasionally there is an item or a bargain that I can only get through an online purchase. Now, the computer is like a sales clerk. It is about as reasonable as those people who spray you with perfume when you walk into a large department store.

Yes, you are allergic to that fragrance and yes, you try to duck away only to knock over an entire display of rare silver jewelry, but the clerk will not take no for an answer. It's not her fault. Her brain has gone soft from listing to "Jingle Bell Rock" the entire workday, and that's just in November.

After doing extensive research, I think here's how it works. So, you find the item you want to purchase and click on it. Then it goes into your icon shopping cart. Simple and easy so far. And then you click on check out.

Here is the problem.

Either the cart turns over or a wheel breaks on it, sending it careening into another computer screen, or it disappears entirely. And now you will have to start all over again. If, by chance, the cart does not disappear, the inventory will show that you have purchased 150 Serta mattresses plus a two-week stay at an exclusive resort in Bora Bora instead of the $30 reversible scarf you saw in the advertisement.

In about three days, you will have delivered to your home enough mattresses to have a tent sale.

Little men behind the screen are so busy laughing at your gullibility that you will have to reboot your computer. Of course, you will never find that scarf again, and your credit card has slipped behind the computer into a crevice where it will take a set of tongs to extract it, and your fingertips are so numb they will no longer work on the keyboard anymore.

Now, I am a traditionalist. I like the real old-fashioned meaning of the holidays: finding a parking space. This is something we know about around here. We are adept from the summer gridlock of knowing the back roads and searching out parking spaces in what looks like a major league ballpark lot. In fact, some year-round residents are so well versed in this, their car has taken on the look of a shark, with a grey fin sticking out of the top and the music from the movie "Jaws" playing through attached loudspeakers.

I have a friend who can spot someone leaving a store and heading for their car within seconds of them pulling their keys out of their purse. This person can follow within a tenth of a millimeter behind the shopper's kidneys, without ever touching their body. With just the right timing, my friend can pull into the vacant parking space even before the EMTs arrive to cart the other 46 car occupants away, the ones who have been circling for that space since yesterday.

I tell you, it's a beautiful sight, and one you will never experience shopping online. The cart icon has its place, but give me the old-fashioned asphalt anytime.