To be fair, I’ve noticed that people find a lot of interpretations of their life built into this holiday season. I don’t know whether it is a time for reflection or just plain pausing to look around and decide what might be important that causes one to be introspective.
I do know now, though, that the true meaning of the holidays is combat-ready shopping. And that also means online. You 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 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, computers are like sales clerks.
They are about as reasonable as those people that 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 their fault. Their brain has gone soft from listing to “Jingle Bell Rock” the entire work day.
After doing extensive research, 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.
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 item again and your credit card has slipped behind the computer into a crevice that will take a set of tongs to extract it, and your fingertips are so numb they will no longer work on the keyboard anymore.
If the screen does not disappear, the inventory will show that you have purchased 150 Serta mattresses plus a two-week stay at an exclusive resort in Hawaii 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 open a warehouse and have a tent sale.
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 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 before even the EMTs arrive to cart away the other 46 car occupants 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.
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Nancy Katz has a degree in creative writing and is the author of the book, "Notes from the Beach." She has written the column Around Town for the Cape Gazette for twenty years. Her style is satirical and deals with all aspects of living in a resort area on Delmarva.
